


Under the Dust

by MoonCatcher



Category: KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Ghost Hunting, Institutional Violence, M/M, Minor Character Death, Romance, urban exploring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-14 01:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16029767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonCatcher/pseuds/MoonCatcher
Summary: Jin comes to Japan to see and document some lesser known abandoned places. Along with a fellow urban explorer Kame and a couple of friends, Jin might get to see more than he signed up for. Kame doesn’t believe in ghosts. Until he does.





	Under the Dust

Kame is entering what must have been quite a nice, cozy kitchen once upon a time, when his phone buzzes with an incoming call in the back pocket of his stylish, ripped jeans. It’s been set on quiet all day so the only indication someone is trying to reach him is the low vibration, and he can easily ignore it.

He’s too distracted by the things he sees. Looking around, taking in all that’s there as well as all that’s been already lost in time, he makes sure to film every single detail of the place. The kitchen cabinets are still holding together, with only about a half of the door either having fallen off completely or teetering on the last corroded hinge. It won’t take long and all the inside shelves will be exposed to the curious eye of people who will discover this place later, to insect and rodents seeking whatever might be still edible in the few fading boxes sitting on the unsteady racks, and to the elements finding their way inside the house through broken windows and the roof that partially caved in sometime last winter.

Kame is glad he has made it over here just in time to document it all. The perfect line between what this place used to be and its inevitable end.

The whole area has been bought by a big developer firm whose plans for this place don’t include a small, pretty much ordinary house built here at the time of Kame’s great-grandparents.

But for people like Kame, places like this are anything but ordinary.

Each one of such places tells a story of the life that has been. Of people once having lived that life.

People who cooked in this kitchen, a family that gathered around the kitchen table that’s now standing in the middle of the room covered in dust and mold and a few precisely arranged objects someone put there recently to get a nice shoot for their Instagram; those people and their ordinary morning routines and Sunday lunches, birthday parties, and everyday little things. The people are gone, but what’s left behind has a story to tell.

“This is amazing, guys,” Kame tells to no one in particular. He slowly walks over and films a close-up of one of the half-open cabinets. There are cups and plates, none of them broken, and a couple of random spices and sauces that are better left inside their boxes and glasses. No one has actually cooked in this kitchen for over thirty years, possibly longer. “You know how much I love cooking,” Kame goes on, checking the fading colors and writings on the labels. He can recognize some of the ingredients, by their name mostly, because the packaging has changed over the years. “And here I am, in this kitchen, thinking of what I would’ve possibly cooked if I had been here three decades ago…”

There’s a can of something that looks like beans, but the top is all bulging up and Kame doesn’t dare touching it. He steps back, turns slowly around to find more treasures left here in this amazing time capsule.

Through the doorframe on the opposite wall, he can see glimpses of lights as his friends are moving through the other room. From the look of it, it’s a living room with two doors leading to small bedrooms.

Kame can’t wait to see it all.

“Hey, Kamenashi! You _must_ see this!”

The camera in Kame’s hand shakes as he takes a sharp turn after the voice. He’ll need to edit this part out later. Or not.

“What?”

His heartbeat actually speeds up as a rush of curiosity and excitement runs through his body. He recognizes the well-known feeling and basks in it for a second. It’s one of the reasons why he does this, why he loves doing this. The moments when you find something incredible under piles of thrash or covered in decades worth of layers of dust.

He wouldn’t trade the experience for anything in the whole world.

“Man, this is incredible!” Another voice.

Kame hurries over to the living room, leaving the rest of the fouling contents of the kitchen cabinets behind. He hasn’t even checked the old fridge with a single magnet stuck on its rusty door, an old souvenir from Mt. Fuji.

“What do you have here?” Kame asks as he enters the room.

His friends are huddled around a low cabinet that seems to be holding together by some magical trick rather than the laws of physics. The large window on the front wall is shattered which leaves the living room exposed to weather changes. There’s an old swallow nest up in the corner, and the only reminder of the birds once using it is the mess all over the floor underneath.

Kame makes a little mental note to film a close up of both later.

“There are pictures of the family that lived here.”

Meisa steps aside to make room for Kame. She’s got her ‘EXPLORE WITH MEisa’ hoodie on, her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and her camera seems to be permanently glued to her hand. There’s no doubt she’s getting some cool pictures for her Instagram today. Kame can tell because even if only a half of the footage he’s filmed so far could be used for his new video, it would still be worth every mile they had to drive to get here.

“Look,” Pi joins in with his own excitement, still hunched up over the shelf and slowly recording every inch, every detail. “They even had a dog.”

“We should check the backyard later,” Meisa suggests.

“So cool.” Kame quickly points the camera to the fading black and white family pictures carefully lined up on the top of the cabinet. He’s careful not to touch anything, partly aware of the possible mold contamination and partly worried the whole structure might collapse if someone as much as breathed out in the wrong direction around it. There are pictures in frames as well as small knick-knack, things that used to be a part of people’s everyday life. A dusty case with a pair of glasses, a box of matches with a few unused still inside, a decorative candlestick…

“Wait until you see this,” Meisa calls from a couple of feet away, pointing at yet another cabinet with yet another picture frame. This one holds a photo of a woman in her forties, presumably, her dark hair carefully combed up and held by an ornate comb in an old fashioned hairstyle not many wear these days. She seems to be looking past the camera, at someone or something. She’s not beautiful in a traditional sense, but there’s something about the gap in time between when the photo was taken and today that makes her look fine and delicate. Life couldn’t have been easy back in the day for whoever lived in this house, but for the single day of the photo session, this woman became someone else.

“Look at the details on her kimono. Here.” Kame points a finger at the picture, not quite touching it. He’s filming it all, talking to both his friends and his viewers at the same time. “It must’ve cost a fucking fortune.”

“My dad bought one of those things for my mom for their wedding anniversary a few years back,” Pi says. Then he points at the picture. “Maybe her man did the same.”

“Oh, a declaration of love, I like that,” Kame says.

“You have no idea.” Meisa stands between the two of them and snaps a quick picture that will probably never make it past their private collection of material taken during their exploring. “The guy loved his wife more than anything. She died when she was forty two, or something.”

“So probably around the time this picture was taken,” Kame muses. He moves the camera from the picture to Meisa, waiting for her to continue the story. Somehow, Meisa always knows all the juicy backstories about the places they visit. She says she ‘has her sources’, and at first Kame kind of thought she was making it all up, but she _mostly_ isn’t. Most of the stuff she talks about is legit and can be proved as such.

Well, not so much the ghost stories she loves to tell…

“Yeah, pretty much,” Meisa agrees. “I think she was sick. The guy never left this house after she passed away, and by ‘never’ I actually mean _never_. His kids brought him groceries and took care of him. After he was gone, they just left the house as it was.”

“They could’ve sold it,” Pi suggests. No doubt that’s what he would do.

“Not according to the last will. The house is not to be touched as long as there’s a family connection to the couple.”

Pi snorts at that. “So, let’s say, six generations down the road, there will be someone owning this place but they still won’t be able to do anything with it?”

“Exactly. There’s a lawsuit currently open, and the developer who got this place probably won’t be allowed to tear this all down, even though they would love to.”

“What the hell?” Kame shifts the camera back to the picture again. He wants to make sure people watching his video later will ask the same questions he’s asking now. Why would anyone want his family to own a ruin taken over by nature and all kinds of mold?

Meisa’s face lights up. Like she’s been waiting for that exact reaction all along. “Because they are still here,” she says with a grin. “Or at least he is.”

“Oh, shut up!” Pi rolls his eyes. “We said no ghost bullshit this time.”

“It’s no bullshit. The picture here?” She points a finger at the portrait. “It moves from room to room. You can check the videos of other urban explorers who have been here, and you’ll clearly see the same photo being placed somewhere else in each of them.”

“Yeah, because some assholes can’t keep their hands to themselves and have to move stuff around for fucking ‘aesthetic’. Give me a break.” Pi is not buying any of it.

“Maybe,” Meisa shrugs, “But when my source was here, the frame was sitting on a night stand in the master bedroom, and I can vouch that the person isn’t one of the assholes you’re talking about.”

“Well, then someone was here between then and now and moved it.”

While the two bicker on about stupid kids vandalizing abandoned places and the pros and cons of the existence of ghosts, Kame studies the woman’s face.

Could she be a ghost? Or could she be a reason why someone else became a ghost? To roam the place where they had lived together, shared a life and raised kids?

A light breeze touches the nape of Kame’s neck, and a shiver runs down his spine.

He doesn’t remember pulling his hood down, but he must have at some point, because his neck is exposed to the sudden chill.

He stops recording and shakes his head.

He’s not buying any ghost stories either.

His phone buzzes again. He ignores it just like the first time. There’s still a few interesting rooms and corners to explore around here and he’s not letting anyone distract him.

“Honestly, I don’t care if you believe me or not,” Meisa finally says. “It’s not going to change my mind about the story being pretty cool.”

“Because you wish you could go full-on _Sixth Sense_ ,” Pi makes a grimace, and his voice quivers on purpose as he continues in a mocking tone, “I can see dead people.”

“I don’t need to see dead people or ghosts or whatever to believe there’s a strange energy lingering at some of the places we go to. Capitalism and consumer oriented lifestyle have changed people from being ‘just people’ to being ‘people and things’,” she stresses the two with air quotes, “So when there are so many personal belongings left behind somewhere, it’s easy to imagine a part of the person those things once belonged to is stuck at the place as well. Kind of unable to detach itself from the material possessions.”

“Then how do you explain like, medieval ghosts?” Pi narrows his eyes.

“The really _old_ ghosts are stuck to places that meant something to them, rather than objects. So, in a way, the same rationale, just different means.”

“Oh dammit, could you repeat that on camera?” Kame promptly switches the camera on, cursing himself he hasn’t had it on the whole time.

“What?” Meisa rolls her eyes while next to her, Pi is not even trying to muffle giggles. Of course, his camera has been on the whole time. It’s gonna cost Kame a drink, or ten, to get the footage from Pi so he could use it in his video.

“Come on, for the record.”

Meisa hesitates, and that alone should tell Kame he’s not getting a repeat of her ghost philosophy, but he’s two seconds too late to realize it, because Meisa is already leaning close to his camera, her face all serious grimace and warm brown eyes wide open, and when she speaks up, her voice is fake deep and snappy. “Ghosts. Are. Fucking. Real. Get. Over. It.”

And that’s it.

Pi is laughing so hard he needs to bend over, Meisa gives Kame’s camera the finger, and Kame sighs and groans and wonders why he’s still hanging out with these two.

“I’m getting it on a t-shirt,” Kame warns in a fake attempt to sound grumpy, but really, with two other people lost in an uncontrollable fit of giggles, it’s hard not to join in.

“Oh, you totally should!” Pi agrees.

“It’s totally copyrighted,” Meisa deadpans.

“Says who?”

“The ghost behind you.”

This time it’s Kame flipping her off, but as soon as Meisa throws her head back with laughter, Kame gives the space behind him a quick glance anyway. Just in case. The tiny hairs at the nape of his neck are still up for some reason, but he decides it must be the late afternoon breeze coming through the broken window.

-

They spend two more hours in the house and its backyard, eventually finding also a kennel with its roof fallen in and its rotten walls overgrown with weeds. A small dirty bowl filled with rain water and moss is hiding under one of the planks. A smudge on its side indicates there used to be a picture of a dog paw at some point. The dog’s name scribbled on it can’t be deciphered anymore. Meisa takes a picture, crouching and nearly toppling over to get the angles and light all right. She posts the final photo on her Instagram right away.

Overall, however, there’s nothing much left outside of the house itself, which makes a nice contrast to all the preserved treasures inside.

It’s almost midnight when they get back to the city and Meisa drops Kame off at the entrance to the building where he lives. Pi was the first to say goodnight, even though Kame suspects he will be up all night sorting through the pictures and footage recorded today.

The little house in the middle of nowhere was like a museum. Like a window back in time. It’s places like these Kame loves the most, but he can get just as much excited about closed down amusement parks, abandoned industrial spaces, or communal buildings, such as hospitals or schools. He and Pi were in some pretty cool abandoned hospitals in the past, and there’s still so many out there that Kame wants to document before someone decides it’s time to tear it all down and build something new and modern, something that will make money.

In general, people lack imagination. They think they need to destroy everything and build something new in order to make profit.

Kame?

Kame has built a quite comfortable life for himself by traveling around, filming places, and allowing his subscribers and anyone else who wants to see to take a peek into the lives long gone.

And he loves every minute of it.

He loves it so much that he’s now doing the very same thing he expects Pi to be doing—he’s had a shower, made himself a coffee, and is sitting on the sofa in his tiny living room, his laptop in his lap and his two year old dachshund comfortably curled up against his thigh and every so often quietly whimpering in her sleep.

That’s Kame’s world.

One day, he plans to expand it, little by little. He and Meisa previously talked about a possible trip to Malaysia or Thailand to do some exploring there. And if that goes well… who knows?

For now, though, he takes life one day at time, and tonight it means going through the pictures taken in a small abandoned house miles aways from the nearest city.

He’s just reached the part of his camera feed where the pictures of the kitchen start, when a pop-up window appears at the bottom of his screen, announcing an incoming video call from Pi.

Kame accepts the call and in no time Pi’s sleep deprived but somewhat still suspiciously bright face takes over the laptop screen.

“Yo! Check your phone!” Pi blurts out. The squeak in his voice wakes Ran-chan up and she sleepily looks up, her tiny pink tongue stuck between her teeth and poking out of her mouth. Kame glances down at her and chuckles, petting her head.

“What’s going on?”

It’s not the first time Pi calls him at such a goddamn hour, but that doesn’t make it any less tiring. Kame thinks he should’ve gone to bed when he had a chance.

“Check. Your. Phone.”

It makes Kame wonder where his phone is. He’s been so busy with his camera that he completely forgot about everything else.

After a moment of rummaging around, his phone is finally in his hand. There’s six missed calls.

Kame’s breath hitches in his throat. What the hell.

A quick look tells him it’s neither his family or any of his friends. An unknown number.

“Seriously, why do you even have that thing when you don’t bother picking up?” Pi goes on, his weird excitement not waning.

A frown crosses Kame’s forehead. “Was it you?”

“You wish!” Finally, Pi calms down enough to speak in whole sentences that aren’t about Kame’s obvious inability to be social. “ _Just Jin_ is coming to Japan and wants to meet with us!” Ran-chan is once again disturbed from her sleep by Pi’s voice, and fidgets around until her head is pressed between Kame’s ass and the backrest of the couch. It can’t be comfortable, but she’s a dog, so what can Kame know about it… “He tried to reach you but then called me, and me— _unlike someone_ —actually answered the phone.”

Kame rolls his shoulders back. “Just—who?”

“Oh, come on! Jin Akanishi? The dude from the States who did the series about amusement parks a while ago? We watched it all in, like, two days!”

Kame rakes his memory until he’s able to match Pi’s description with an actual visual memory. And then he feels stupid, because yes, _Just Jin_ is a pretty big name in the online urban exploring community, not just in the States. As far as Kame can remember at the moment, Jin and his crew have done some exploring also in Europe, though Kame hasn’t watched much of the material filmed there.

“Okay, so he’s coming here.”

“Yes.”

“And he wants to meet with us.”

On the screen, Pi nods so vigorously his neck might snap. “Yes!”

“Does he also want to do some exploring or…?”

“Yes! Yes! YES!” Pi is bouncing on his bed and for a moment Kame can’t see much else but colorful smudges of Pi’s flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt with a cartoon ghost printed on the front. “That’s like, the best thing. I can’t believe he knows about us… you… well, _us_.”

Kame fakes nonchalance with a shrug, because he wants to keep his cool, and all, but deep down… damn, his YouTube channel must be doing better than he’s thought, considering someone like Jin Akanishi actually noticed him and went the extra mile to contact him—fine, to contact Pi, because Kame is basically an asocial, which is pretty funny, given his livelihood depends on _social_ media. He feels a grin slowly spread across his face.

Pi immediately catches the difference. “Now, that’s the reaction I want to see.”

“This is so cool!”

“I know!” Pi laughs.

“So fucking cool!” Kame’s voice raises. Ran-chan huffs and tries to burrow herself further into the couch.

“And you almost missed it.”

At Pi’s words, the whole realization hits Kame hard. He almost missed it indeed. All those missed calls from an unknown number. An overseas number. Jin has been calling him from the other side of the world, and Kame had his phone vibrate against his ass instead of picking it up.

Sure, he was busy. Busy exploring and discovering and filming. Talking rubbish about ghosts.

“He could’ve sent an email,” Kame says after a moment. “Where did he even get my number. Or yours?”

“Probably from Ryo?” Pi shrugs and leans back against the headboard of his bed. Kame can see a bag of chips tossed on the empty space next to the spot Pi is sitting at.

“Who is Ryo?”

“A guy Jin often does abandoned with? Also a guy I’ve known online for years, ever since we talked about _One Piece_ in this Crunchyroll group…”

Kame chuckles. “Seriously?”

“Hey, don’t judge me. I’m pretty sure you’ve got some weird friends on baseball forums in the depths of the dark web.”

“There’s no such a t—you asshole! I don’t need to talk about baseball online. And I’m pretty sure the baseball discussions on the dark web have nothing to do with the game.”

Pi wiggles his eyebrows. “Now I’m curious.”

“And I’m disturbed,” Kame mutters. What the hell are they even talking about? Anyway. “So, you know this Ryo guy. And he knows Jin.”

“What can I say, it’s a fucking small world.”

“Do you know when they are coming?”

-

“Dude! This is sick! We’re in fucking Japan!” Ryo bounces through the arrival hall at Narita, a camera on a stick in his hand as he films Jin who is filming him back, recording invaluable footage he can use later to embarrass Ryo. Not that Ryo will care one bit. They still need to pick up their bags, but so far all the shop windows and fast food restaurants with exotic menus have proved to be too much of a distraction. Ryo has already managed to buy an ‘I ❤ JAPAN’ baseball cap and Jin doesn’t know whether to feel embarrassed while publicly acknowledging Ryo’s presence, or laugh at how ridiculous this all is.

Ryo is right though.

They are in fucking Japan.

He quickly turns his camera to film himself. “Guys! We’re in fucking Japan!” He laughs and people are watching him, watching both of them, but Ryo doesn’t care and Jin doesn’t either.

They both film everything they see, from the architecture of the place to all those unknown cartoon characters displayed at every step, trying to sell them coffee and snacks and bags, but also cheap accomodation and guided tours to all the well-known historical sites and tourist traps.

Jin thinks they could fit a bit of those into their schedule here as well, but first thing first.

As they finally pick their bags, Jin calls Yamapi. After the first unsuccessful attempts to reach Kamenashi, he decided to communicate with Yamapi. At least Yamapi doesn’t ignore phone calls, and since this whole trip is kind of a spur of the moment thing, Jin doesn’t want to waste time exchanging emails back and forth when finalizing details on the phone is so much faster, the completely different time-zones regardless.

Eventually Jin has to drag Ryo out of the manga section of a bookstore or they could easily get stuck at the airport forever.

They meet Yamapi and Kame outside the main hall. Japan gives them a warm, sunny welcome. It’s weird to see Ryo and Yamapi greet each other like a couple of old friends who have grown up next door, and not someone who met on an ancient online site for nerds. While those two fall right off into a chatter Jin knows nothing about, he and Kamenashi are left to their own.

“I’m Jin. Hi.”

Kame smiles. “Kame. Well, Kazuya. But... Kame is fine.”

His accent has a soft touch to it, but that’s something Jin has already known. He’s done all his homework and watched Kame’s videos, well, most of them anyway. And he really, really wants to see it all with his own eyes. Japan has got some of the best preserved abandoned places out there, hands down. Most of them aren’t vandalized either, which is something Jin doesn’t often come across back at home. If there’s anything more merciless than the teeth of time gnawing at stuff left behind, then it must be teenagers and assholes who can’t keep their hands to themselves and have the urge to leave their mark on everything, like a dog pissing at every corner to show all other dogs they aren’t the first coming across that very spot.

Sure, some places look cool with a bit of graffiti here and there, but most places… not so much.

“Nice to meet you, _Kame is fine_ ,” Jin jokes, because it’s easy.

And it seems he’s not the only one seeing it that way, because Kame fires right back at him, “You too, _Jin, Just Jin_. And welcome to Japan.”

They don’t shake hands because neither of them offers first.

Instead, Jin flashed out his camera that’s never too far from his reach, and starts filming again. “Hey, what’s up, Jinsplorers? Me and Nishikido have finally met our impromptu guides, Kame and Yamapi—Yamapi is currently too busy revisiting old Crunchyroll times with Ryo, so it’s just me and Kame here. Wanna say hi to my Jinsplorers?” He turns the objective at Kame who looks like a deer caught in headlights for a second.

“Your Jinsp—what?”

Jin beams. “Jinsplorers! People following my channel and my Instagram. It’s a mash-up of ‘Jin’ and ‘explorers’ because they are all exploring all these amazing places with me.” He looks into the camera. “That’s you, guys, am I right? All my amazing Jinsplorers. We’ve been together to some insane abandoned places, and now we’re here in Japan to see more of that shit. And you all will love it, I can feel it.”

“I can think of a place or two I want to show you,” Kame offers.

“One or two? How about all of it?”

The enthusiasm makes Kame laugh. Good. Jin is laughing as well.

“You want to see everything?”

“You have no idea.” Jin nods. Then he finally turns to Ryo and Yamapi. “Hey you two, are you done fangirling over each other? I want to see Japan, not just this parking lot. And Kame here just promised to take us _everywhere_.”

“I so did not!”

It’s only when they get in the car, Yamapi behind the wheel with Ryo beating everyone to take the passenger seat, and Jin and Kame sitting in the back, that Ryo finally snaps out of the haze he seemed to be in since the moment their plane touched the runaway. He fidgets around and looks over his shoulder at Kame.

“Where’s your girlfriend?”

Jin’s eyes roll back. Maybe it was for the best when Ryo was busy discussing manga and other shit with Yamapi, after all.

“Who?”

It can’t be a language barrier. Kame is just genuinely confused.

Yamapi, on the other hand, is snorting and giggling, and making all sorts of weird noises, because apparently, his brain has caught up with Ryo’s stupid question way before Kame’s. When also Kame realizes what’s this all about, his eyes widen and he quickly shakes his head.

“You mean Meisa? No, no, she’s not my… she’s not…”

Jin kicks the back of Ryo’s seat. “Happy now? You guys should know Ryo only agreed to join me on this trip because he really wanted to meet your friend Meisa. He doesn’t care about the cool abandoned places here at all.”

“Shut up, Akanishi!” Ryo flings an arm back in an attempt to hit Jin, but he misses by a couple of inches, only adding fuel to Jin’s wicked amusement.

“He couldn’t stop talking about her all the way down here.”

“That’s so not true. And besides, I thought she and Kamenashi were a thing.”

Jin reaches out and pokes Ryo’s shoulder. “That didn’t stop you from fantasizing about her.”

Now Yamapi is laughing out loud, his fingers curled around the steering wheel as the last resort preventing him from clapping his hands. “This is priceless. Meisa will love to hear it. Her and Kamenashi dating! That would be something.”

“Oh please, like I would _ever_ be interested,” Kame snorts.

“Can we just go see some abandoned shit now?” Ryo groans and sits straight in his seat, the security belt clipped tight across his chest and eyes glued to the front window.

“Now we’re talking,” Jin says.

“So, where is it going to be?” Yamapi asks when the whole car finally calms down. “Your hotel, Meisa’s place, or something abandoned?”

Ryo groans again and slides a little lower in his seat.

-

Instead of going straight to do the nearest abandoned place, even though Jin looks like he wouldn’t mind at all, or making Ryo’s unspoken wish of meeting Meisa come true, Yamapi drives the car first to the address of Jin and Ryo’s hotel, and as soon as the two leave their bags in their rooms, they are on the move again, this time to find a place to eat and do some obligatory sightseeing.

It turns out Ryo loves more about Japan than just manga. He takes a ton of pictures and pretty much spams his own Instagram and Twitter, and then laughs at people leaving him comments that range from, “Enjoy the trip and say hi to Jin!” to, “WTF you’re in Japan and I didn’t know??” to, “I’ve followed you for abandoned, not this tourist crap, bye,” to, “You guys should do a fan meet-up when you’re here!”

When Ryo reads the last one aloud, Jin seems to be interested in giving it a serious thought.

Kame is a bit in awe, and while he wouldn’t admit it aloud, perhaps a little envious, too. Jin is a real superstar. He’s one step from having people recognize him and approach him on the street. No one would probably recognize Kame, but that’s fine, too. He’s not in this for fame and fortune. He’s just doing what he likes, and somehow it pays the bills. It’s pretty neat.

They are sitting in a small restaurant that is a little aside from the usual evening rush hour, eating noodles and drinking everything from coke to beer.

There’s not a moment of silence and it’s almost like they have all known each other for years. It’s easy to find a topic to chat about when you all love the same thing.

Jin and Ryo have tons of stories about all sorts of places they’ve visited, and their enthusiasm and love for all things abandoned seeps through their every word.

“So you’ve always wanted to do this?” Kame asks later, when it’s just him and Jin at the table because Ryo excused himself to the bathroom and Yamapi is ordering more drinks at the bar.

Jin’s comfortably sprawled in his seat, a little slumped down, his long fingers playing with a straw left at the table after Yamapi took their empty glasses away. He raises a brow. “Sit here with you? Probably not, given I didn’t really know about you until recently.” A smirk is tugging at the corner of his lips.

Kame wants to smack him. “Well, I didn’t know about you until last week.”

“Ouch.” Jin drops the straw. “You’ve been doing abandoned for two years—”

“Two years and three months.”

“—and you seriously didn’t hear about me? You must have been doing something wrong.” Jin narrows his eyes.

“We’ve got our own urban exploring legends here, you know. Just last October I even got to do a location with Tackey&Tsubasa. They took me to Fukushima.” And it was pretty much the highlight of Kame’s career so far. Tackey&Tsubasa were documenting decaying structures around Japan already back in a day when Kame was still sitting in his high school class and pretending he could understand math.

“Wait,” Jin perks up, “You know Tackey&Tsubasa? Like, _know_ know them?”

Jin’s interest is suddenly palpable in the air between them, and as the feeling settles down, it warms Kame’s insides a little bit. He may not be a superstar, but he can still impress Jin a bit. A second hand bewilderment.

“A little. Yeah. I think they are in Cuba right now, kicking off their South American adventure. Tackey mentioned he wanted to drive down across the west coast and see what they can find along the way.” After having all but paved the road for a whole new generation of young Japanese urban explorers, Tackey&Tsubasa moved on to documenting life in rural areas in different regions and countries. They would still share videos of abandoned places, but those aren’t the main focus of their brand anymore.

“That’s so cool,” Jin sighs. Then picks up the straw again and taps it against the table. “But back to your question. No, and yes. I’ve always loved taking pictures; first on my phone, then I got myself a better camera as soon as I had the money. I knew I wanted to do something artsy, though I also knew drawing or painting wouldn’t cut it. My first year at university I even took some art classes, but my professor saw right through me and told me his lessons were about painting and not ogling the naked models sitting in front of us.”

Kame laughs. He’s known Jin for only a couple of hours, but he can see it clearly. “You couldn’t have been the only one affected though.”

“Probably, but the others were better at hiding their interest. And their boners.” Jin giggles like a five year old. It’s cute.

Kame watches Jin with growing curiosity; he likes listening to other people’s stories, because each one is so different from the others. Jin’s low, soft voice with an occasional crack of chuckles is nice to listen to, too.

“Then one day I was sitting outside, minding my own business,” Jin continues, finally able to form words without snorting, “and Jess, one of the models, came to me and asked if I’d be maybe interested in this little project… They were shooting pictures in an old factory for someone preparing a fashion show.”

“That sounds pretty cool.”

“It was.” Jin nods. “I helped with lights, and pretty much anything that was needed, and while they were doing their stuff, I walked around and took a few pictures myself. Not of the dresses, though.”

“Yeah, who needs dresses when there’s corrosion and bird poop everywhere, right?” Kame snorts, because said aloud, it kind of does sound ridiculous. The truth is, however, that he understands it all too well.

“Exactly!” Jin laughs. “And that’s how I started my Instagram. Then I wanted to see more places like that, so I did some digging, and after that… I don’t know, I’m probably not the best photographer out there, after all, and taking videos and talking to people seemed easier.” With a shrug, he adds after a moment, “It’s not, not really, you still need to think of lights and angles, and all that shit, but it’s not the first thing people judge when they watch videos. As long as they can see something, it’s cool. Ryo is an excellent photographer though.”

Kame has seen some of Jin’s pictures and they are pretty good, too. But frankly, Jin’s probably right. Ryo is better. His Instagram is a work of art, from the little Kame had a chance to see—mostly thanks to Pi’s unhinged excitement over the two of them coming to Japan and wanting to meet Kame and Pi.

“How about you?” Jin leans a bit forward, resting his elbows on the edge of the table. “What brought you to do abandoned stuff?”

“I don’t know. We had two empty houses in the neighborhood while I was growing up, and my brothers used them as a hanging spot. It wasn’t really safe, but for that very reason it was the safest place to try smoking and drinking out of parents’ sight.”

“Naturally.”

“Then I found out Tackey&Tsubasa actually did a video of both those places, which was pretty cool. I watched it and thought, maybe I could do this, too. I had nothing much else going on anyway.” Kame shrugs. “Not smart enough for university.”

“Nah, higher education is overrated. I quit after three semesters—turns out, studying art isn’t all about naked bodies all the time. All that theory crap was killing me. And anyway, you actually _can_ find everything online these days, if you’re willing to take the time and look for it. My first videos were literally me step by step following a WikiHow article on video-editing.”

Kame doesn’t think he watched any of those, but man, he can imagine it all too clearly. “I know what you mean!” He throws his head back with laughter as his brain presents him a flash of his own memory, him spending an endless, frustrating night over his laptop and trying to understand how to put together a video with some cheap cut effects and a music background that wouldn’t drown the natural sounds of the filmed material.

“I want to see those houses,” Jin says.

“They were torn down last year, I’m afraid.” One of Kame’s older brothers tried to come up with a petition against the demolition, because, quote, ‘The future generations of local kids deserve to have the opportunities we had,’ but it definitely didn’t click well with the authorities, or even Kame’s parents.

Jin slides down the chair a bit more. Under the table, his knee bumps into Kame’s, but neither of them cares about shuffling their legs away.

“Damn.”

“I know,” Kame agrees and nods.

“So where do we start?” Jin asks, shifting the gears of the conversation. “I’m all pumped up to see some sick places.”

Kame doesn’t really need to think about it too much. Jin and Ryo are here for two weeks, that’s fourteen days of travelling and exploring and having fun, and while it’s tempting to show them all the obvious, well-known spots, Kame kind of wants to offer Jin something else. Something not everyone filming abandoned in Japan gets to see, unless they know the locals. And Jin knows one just fine now.

“I think I’ve got the perfect place to start with,” Kame grins.

-

“A ‘love hotel’, seriously?” Ryo stares at a house overgrown with vegetation, lost in the middle of a forest, in walking distance of the nearest lazy neighborhood. They see two locals as they walk down the street from the train station over here, and neither seemed to pay any extra attention to a group of young people armed with cameras who were taking photos of everything and filming each other.

Kame reaches out and tests the stability of a broken gate leading on to the property. There’s a sign asking for no trespassing, but who even reads these? The hinges give way after a few tugs and pushes, and then it needs just one more final push to get the gate to move through the overgrown grass. Kame looks over his shoulder, inviting the others to follow him. “I’ve been wanting to do this site for a while now. From everything I’ve heard, the inside should be really cool.”

“Let’s do this,” Jin says.

Kame likes the way those simple words set the atmosphere.

They are doing this.

“Wait. Is Meisa coming, or not?” Pi asks, reminding Kame the squad isn’t complete yet. Funny how Jin’s ‘let’s do this’ easily erased the part of Kame’s consciousness that knew they were supposed to meet Meisa here. Kame gave her a call last night after getting home and offered her to join them. She was clearly more curious about meeting the Americans rather than exploring a new location, which is a new one for her, but Kame can’t really blame her. A part of him is more giddy about seeing Jin’s reaction to this place than getting some cool footage for his channel.

Jin’s presence is seriously affecting Kame’s priorities.

He has no idea why it’s happening, or how to stop it.

Kame stops before walking through the gate. “Right. She is. We should probably wait for her.”

“Meisa is coming?” They are definitely having Ryo’s attention now.

“Jesus, Nishikido, you’ve really got it bad.” Jin smacks his friend’s shoulder while making sure to film every inch of Ryo’s reddening face.

“Well, the more the merrier, and all that shit, no?” Ryo defends himself weakly. He’s now more interested in the path that led them here than the house though.

While they wait, Pi tells them how he got a tip about this place from one of his followers who, while never actually having been inside and not being bold enough to go there, really wanted to see a video of it, and so Pi kind of promised to add it to his and Kame’s list of future explorations.

Jin tells them how they went to Europe, knowing they wouldn’t be able to see a third of all the tips they had got beforehand from people all over the place. French fans in particular had what seemed like an endless supply of tips for abandoned places Jin could visit and explore, and from the look of it, most of those mansions were in a perfect shape: the right level of decay accompanied by mostly intact interior.

“Man, now I want to go to France,” Kame groans and stretches against one of the posts holding the shaky gate at place. “I’ve always wanted to go there, for various reasons—”

“Mostly food,” Pi quips.

“For the _culture_ and _history_ ,” Kame corrects him, adding some unnecessary stress to those words.

“And food,” Pi insists, and this time it leads to the intended reaction from Jin and Ryo, both of them grinning and eyeing Kame with amusement.

“And _fashion_ ,” Kame goes on, unfaltered.

Jin points his camera at Kame.

“And food,” Kame finally admits, rolling his eyes. “So what, I love food.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Jin assures him.

They are in the middle of a heated discussion about Jin and Ryo living off junk food for two months as they travelled across the States, documenting all possible closed-down mental asylums and tuberculosis hospitals, when Meisa finally shows up. As soon as she gets close enough to be recognized, Ryo forgets the end of his sentence.

Her pace speeds up as she’s almost there, and then she walks right into Kame’s personal space.

“How could you not tell me that _Just Jin_ is coming to film here?” She pokes the center of Kame’s chest with a finger.

“And _Yellow Ranger_ ,” Ryo quickly adds, but his words don’t seem to register.

“Jesus, you guys are impossible! You’re supposed to tell me these things!” She shakes her head in frustration, then steps back and turns to Jin, presenting not only a warm welcome smile, but also the front of her black hoodie that has a barcode and the word ‘Jip’s’ printed in white across her chest. “Hi, nice to meet you. Biggest fan here.”

Jin beams. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Hey, what’s up?” Meisa shoots back.

Kame frowns. It’s like they are suddenly speaking a different language altogether. There’s something he’s missing, presumably because he didn’t watch the couple of weeks of watching time worth of content on Jin’s channel. Obviously, Meisa did. Maybe he should give it a try as well at some point. Like, when he’s bored or curious about different countries and how other urban explorers approach the subject of documenting decaying past. From the little he’s already seen, Jin’s doing a great job…

Meisa gets a quick hug, and for a reason he can’t really explain, Kame looks away and pretends to be busy testing the hinges of the shabby gate next to him, even though he knows they aren’t stuck and the way inside the property is in all clear.

“You have my hoodie,” Jin is grinning, holding Meisa’s shoulders and looking at her, like he’s never seen a girl in a hoodie before. “I’ve never seen anyone wear one of these!”

“Really? Oh my god, that’s such a shame! I love it. The material is amazing.”

“I know, right? Hey, Kame, since you said you’re into fashion stuff, I could get you one of those, too. It’s my limited streetwear collection. Always only two hundred pieces of each.”

Kame looks up. “Why not. One can never have enough hoodies.”

“That’s some serious truth right there,” Jin chuckles.

“What does ‘Jip’s’ even mean?” Kame finally asks, because if he didn’t, it would totally bug him all day. It’s like the whole ‘Jinsplorers’ moment all over again, only this time he’s even more confused. He saw Meisa in the very same hoodie before, but he never knew there was a connection to Jin.

“Jin’s. Important. People.” With each word, Jin points at one of the letters printed on the hoodie, without actually touching Meisa or making her feel uncomfortable. A quick glance at his friend’s face tells Kame she’s pretty impressed with Jin’s act. Personal space and consent, and not overstepping boundaries are a sure path to win Meisa’s trust. “I started the line to raise money for my travels, so every person who buys something pretty much helps me accomplish my dream of documenting every single abandoned place around the world. I can’t explain it, but it’s important to me, to do that, and that makes the people who help me important too. Thus, Jin’s Important People. Jip’s.”

“That’s pretty cool, actually.” Kame means it.

Knowing the best ways to sell your personal brand is a must when your income relies on people knowing you and liking you.

Kame’s not bad at it himself, but Jin, damn, Jin’s on a completely different level of knowing the rules of this game. Like… Tackey&Tsubasa level. Saying Kame is impressed would be an understatement.

Meisa pouts. “My ‘EXPLORE WITH MEisa’ sounds so lame in comparison.”

“So does not!” Jin counters. He sounds like he means it, too. Kame likes that, likes how genuine Jin is. He jumps head first into everything, this whole trip being a prime example. From what Kame understands, it was mostly a spur of the moment decision, a bit like, “We’re doing this now,” and the next day Kame had a million missed calls on his phone while Yamapi and Ryo were discussing actual details, all the how’s and when’s.

“Not lame at all,” Ryo jumps in again, sensing his chance. “I’d explore with you anytime!”

“Speaking of lame…” Jin grins.

“Are we still talking fashion, or are we doing some exploring?” Yamapi interrupts whatever is about to unfold. “Me and Kame have wanted to check this place out for a while now, so let’s do this.”

And just like that, they all get their cameras ready and one after another walk through the creaky gate. Feet in a variety of shoes, from Ryo’s solid combat boots to Jin’s sport shoes to Meisa’s bright red sneakers, make their way through the desolated front yard, heading towards a door on the left that looks broke open, unlike the main entrance decorated with more ‘no trespassing’ signs.

Kame, Jin, and Yamapi are the ones filming everything, their commentaries mingling in whenever they happen to get too close to each other’s filming spot, while Ryo and Meisa are more loners roaming around and looking for the perfect shot. It’s not easy to get one, though, because there are trees and wild greenery everywhere, shadowing what’s left of the building.

Kame finishes his intro first, which is a surprise, given how many times he had to repeat parts he had previously messed up, too distracted by Jin moving around and being loud and cheerful. Every time Kame caught the now familiar, “Hey, what’s up, Jinsplorers,” he wanted to know what Jin was talking about. Did Jin mention he’s doing this location with Kame? Probably yes, because that’s what the online community does—they boost each other up and encourage their followers to follow also other people. Kame himself has just spent some time prompting people to follow Jin if they want to see some cool videos from around the world.

“… and here’s Kame from _Ronin Explores_ ,” Jin says as he makes his way over to Kame’s location.

Kame gives Jin’s camera a wave. “Hi guys. Ready to get in there?”

“A love hotel closed down in the 80s? Hell, yeah!” Jin beams.

The side door gives in easily, and they are inside.

“Holy crap,” Jin says with a gasp, so close behind Kame that Kame can not only sense Jin’s camera over his shoulder, but feels Jin’s breath at the back of his neck. The puff of hot air makes him shiver; or maybe it’s just a reaction to the place, all desolated and falling apart, but still preserved well enough to offer a glimpse into its former shiny glory. Dark walls, an obscene picture hanging above a red bathtub filled with rain water, a heap of molding towels on the floor. A big window opening the space into a small, private yard, creating an illusion someone could’ve easily watched the people who took a bath there.

Kame zooms in onto the picture; under a grown apple tree, a naked woman kneels in front of a naked man, reaching for a cloth to veil her body, or his. The story of Adam and Eve presented here in this room seems like a joke, though, because people enjoying their time in here cared about all but modesty…

Kame says that much aloud for the camera while capturing every detail of the room.

When he accidentally gets Jin in the picture, Jin is grinning and giving him a thumb-up. “That’s pretty deep, huh?”

“I like to think about the places I visit,” Kame says simply.

Jin nods. “I get it. And I wasn’t mocking. You seem to be good at reading the atmosphere of the locations you explore. Not everyone can do that. Hell, even I struggle sometimes.”

Kame’s cheeks heat up.

“Thanks.”

They move on, from the bathroom to the adjacent bedroom with a ridiculously big bed surrounded by mirrors, some of them shattered, some of them only cracked, but most of them are still perfect in their frames, reflecting everything that could happen on the bed.

Jin steps forward, stopping at the edge of the bared mattress. He slowly turns around to film the mirrors and his own reflection in them.

“Man, this is kinky. People would just fuck while watching themselves doing it. But then again, it’s a love hotel, right? So auto-voyeurism is probably the least kinky stuff having been going on around here.”

Somehow, Kame can’t get the imagine of two writhing bodies multiplied by the mirror plates out of his head now, and he speaks before thinking, “I think it’s pretty hot.”

“Now I need to know whether you have a mirror in your bedroom or not!”

The worst thing about the moment isn’t Kame’s realization of what he just said, but the eagerness in Jin’s voice when he replies to Kame’s unexpected confession.

_Fuck._

“What? No, no way!” Kame quickly discards the topic. “We should go check out the rest of this place,” he mutters, looking for a door and an escape route while Jin’s still looking at him, a mix of curiosity and amusement plastered all over his face.

“Whatever,” Jin chuckles. “I’m just gonna get some more details over here.” By ‘over here’ he means the bed, naturally, and as Kame moves towards the nearest door that should be connecting the room with the rest of the hotel, Jin behind his back is leaning over to film the mirror frames.

Kame is one foot out in the hallway when he hears Jin’s voice.

“What the—? Hey, have you seen it just now?”

But when Kame turns around, all he sees is Jin standing there with a perplexed expression, and the reflection of Jin’s back in the mirrors.

“Have I seen what?”

Jin glances over his shoulder, frowns, then quickly fiddles with his camera to rewind and replay the last recording. His frown deepens, and he shakes his head. “Nothing…”

“Have you got the footage you wanted?” Kame asks.

“Yeah… I guess…” Jin purses his lips, staring at the back display of the camera. “Hm.”

Kame doesn’t ask again.

Usually, when Kame explores places with other people, they all end up doing their own thing and only come together at the end, or if one of them finds something worth sharing that the others shouldn’t miss.

This time seems different though, because Jin is sticking with him, moving through dark, narrow hallways, testing which door can be opened and which is still locked, or stuck. Jin’s voice narrating the experience of exploring this place is a constant murmur in Kame’s own recording.

He doesn’t really mind.

Sometimes Jin’s commentary sparks a thought that might’ve never occurred to Kame on his own.

“You could rent a room here for literally just an hour, or two,” Jin is saying while looking through some papers and flyers scattered all over a reception desk in the lobby, a small room one would walk into through the main entrance. Kame is filming more provocative pictures on the walls, as well as creepy, mangy taxidermy sitting on a cabinet opposite to the desk—so far he’s recognized a peasant and something that could easily be a hybrid of a dove and a peacock. It’s hard to tell when half of it is rotten away or eaten by moths. “There’s ten rooms in here,” Jin goes on, and Kame forgets about the bird mutants, “which doesn’t sound like a lot, but really, people wouldn’t rent this place for a week, or anything. They just wanted to have a good time, and get out of here.”

“Most of them probably had families, too,” Kame says.

“Yeah, right. So they would come here for some kinky time with their lovers, because they couldn’t just go to _any_ hotel—”

“Regular hotels would ask too many questions, plus someone could see them going in and out, and that would bring up a whole new pile of different questions. Places like this, though, no one saw or heard anything. People could come here with multiple lovers at the same time, men could bring other men—something that would’ve got you in some serious troubles elsewhere. But here… no one gave a fuck.”

Jin’s nodding again. “Man, this is crazy though. I mean… Look at this!” He’s flipping through more papers when he suddenly find something really cool. And he wants to share it with Kame. “Is this the ‘Mirror Room’?” He points at a picture in a bottom corner of the page open in front of him.

Kame quickly walks over there, and they both lean over the counter and stare at the image through their cameras, their foreheads almost touching.

“Yeah! That’s the place.” Kame quickly flips the page, only to discover more pictures. It’s a brochure of the hotel, listing down all ten rooms, each with a different theme, and prices for either a one-hour-stay or a whole night. “This is both creepy and amazing. We can literally match the pictures in this with what the rooms look like today.”

“I want to find this one!” Jin presses a finger to the middle of the second page.

The room has a series of Kamasutra-like embossments running all around the walls, depicting men and women in a variety of sexual encounters. The picture quality is low and grainy and doesn’t show many details, just a general idea of what’s going on, but there’s no doubt about what they are looking at.

“Do you think people used those as a manual when they wanted to spice up their bedroom action?” Jin asks in all seriousness, leaning closer, as if that could help him focus better and see the details.

“Or they would play a game of how many of those they could go through in the hour they got to spend in that room,” Kame says with a shrug.

Who could even know what was going on inside the heads of people who came into this hotel, or really, into love hotels in general. Different people have different reasons to do the things they do.

Jin chuckles. “I’d play that.”

“Should I be surprised?” Kame gives Jin a quick glance, their eyes meet, all too close before Jin pulls back and straightens up.

Kame studies the picture some more, but really, if they want to get a closer look at the naughty embossments, they need to find the place and hope it’s in at least half as good shape as the Mirror Room.

They move from one room to another. Some are more desolated than others: one has a collapsed roof and the debris has buried pretty much everything, making it impossible to match its interior with any of the pictures in the catalogue; another one, on the other hand, is in a nearly perfect shape, with a walk-in onsen styled bath and even a little shrine in a corner.

“Somebody put a lot of money and thought into this,” Jin muses as he films details of the altar with arranged vases and white plates for offerings, as well as a number of small objects that must have been left there not too long ago by people exploring this place before Kame and Jin entered the premises.

Jin reaches into his pocket and fumbles around for a bit before pulling something out and placing it onto the shelf. It’s a lighter, one of those old-school metal ones.

To Kame’s raised eyebrow Jin says, “What? The Code speaks about not taking anything away, not about not leaving something behind.”

“I’m pretty sure it says you shouldn’t leave a mess.”

“It’s a $100 lighter. Hardly a mess. The ghosts in here deserve something nice.“

“Now you sound like Meisa. You should ask her. I’m pretty sure she’ll know about some local ones as well.” Kame shakes his head, then goes back to what he was talking about before. He makes it a point to ignore the shelf now though. “Anyway. When people came here, they wanted to forget about the everyday reality outside,” Kame says. That seems like the best generalization he can come up with. “Love hotels like this one used to play on people’s imagination.”

Jin looks up. “Used to?”

“Yeah. These places gave people something they didn’t get at home. Many love hotels were full of kitschy stuff, from rotating beds and mirrors…” Kame nods as he notices Jin’s smirk, both of them thinking of the first room they saw here. “To some really tacky furnishings. Things you wouldn’t find in a regular hotel, so whoever walked in one of these immediately knew where they were and what they could expect. Then a law introduced in the 80s tried to regulate love hotels, so naturally, a lot of them got rid of the weird cheap stuff to look like ‘normal’ hotels, in which case the law didn’t concern them anymore.”

“What’s indecent about pornographic engravings all over the walls?” Jin chuckles.

Kame shakes his head.

“So places either changed their façade and kept going, or were simply closed down?”

“Most of them underwent some serious revamping and kept going, under a thin veil of fake decency. But it’s hard to give exact numbers. You can’t simply walk into a library and ask for academic books about stuff like that.”

“Really? I’ve read studies about porn before. I mean, serious studies.”

“A half of the people who seek love hotels are married couples who can’t have sex at home while they either live under one roof with their parents, or have their own kids. The clientele of places like this hasn’t changed much over time. Sex is not something you write about, or even talk about openly here. ”

Jin raises a brow. “You do. Now.”

“Yeah, and my parents would frown if they heard me. My grandparents… grandpa would be scandalized.” Kame feels a twitch in the corner of his lips. “Grandma would probably want to see this place though.”

“As if they didn’t visit one of these in the past as well,” Jin can’t help himself, and just the thought alone turns the twitch in Kame’s face into a burst of laughter.

“Oh god! Don’t say that!”

“Too late,” Jin is grinning and filming Kame and his snorts and hiccups.

“We should just find the porn comic room now.” Kame is not sure he can now look at anything in here without thinking of his grandparents, which is disturbing as hell, but at least he can breathe now when the worst of his fit is over, and he and Jin can continue their exploration.

They are just about to round a corner, stepping over some planks and crumbled wallpaper piled up on the floor, when they hear Ryo’s voice.

“What the hell—? Meisa! Pi! You guys need to see this! Where the fuck is Jin, he can’t miss this!”

Jin and Kame glance at each other, then Jin takes in a sharp breath and jumps over some of the scrap lying under his feet. “I’m here!”

“What is it?” Kame follows right behind.

He bumps into Jin’s back a moment later when Jin halts in the opening of the nearest door. Jin wavers upon the collision, but he stands firm, and Kame quickly peels himself off of Jin.

“Why the fuck is there a rocking horse in here?” Jin asks, laughing, but also very much perplexed.

Kame peeks into the room over Jin’s shoulder.

There’s nothing much standing out as far as the décor goes. Definitely no pornographic pictures on the walls. Dark purple wallpaper is peeling off, revealing smudgy walls with scattered clusters of forming mold. One of the dingy stuffed bird mutants they saw in the lobby earlier is sitting on an otherwise empty shelf. The only remarkable thing about the whole place is a giant bed taking up most of the room’s space; a black and white zebra pattern bedspread is covering the mattress, and right in the middle of the bed, there’s a big rocking horse. Its whole body is sheathed in red leather, with black and gold details of mane and a bridle. It’s got dead-looking eyes, black dots painted on white discs.

Ryo is leaning forward to get some nice close-up shoots without destroying the intentional set up.

“Someone had fun arranging this one,” he comments.

“Fucking creepy,” Jin says, taking a step inside the room. “Look at the freak, just chilling there…”

“I can’t believe someone brought it in here.”

Jin approaches the bed. “From an amusement park to a love hotel.”

“You should get on it,” Ryo suggests with a chuckle. “It’s gonna do a sick picture.”

He doesn’t need to say it twice.

“Oh man…!”

Jin walks around to get the scene on film, and then is on the bed, balancing on the mattress dipping under his steps as he makes his way to the horse. His feet burrow into the shabby bedding, leaving prints and crumpled sheets, and the horse wobbles as Jin gets close.

“It’s got this coin mechanism here, you know, like the stuff for kids in malls,” Jin says after further observation. “Is there a supermarket somewhere nearby, Kame?”

“Not really. Jin, I don’t think it’s—”

Unlike Jin and Ryo who are too busy arranging Jin’s photo session with the horse, Kame has enough time to come to a conclusion the two of them are wrong. He’s in no way an expert on this kind of stuff, but with the little he knows and has read before, he’s positive the horse is not a kid’s toy.

There’s a reason why it’s here.

No one had to bring it over.

Jin balances some more to straddle the thing, still filming everything he does. “Guys, there’s a fucking rocking horse. Like, would you believe that? Oh, look, it probably had a saddle at some point. See the hole here, and here?” He points to the horse’s back.

Then he sits down, grinning widely for Ryo’s camera. “For Instagram!”

“For Instagram!” Ryo echoes.

“Hmm, this is actually comfortable…” Jin sways a bit back and forth, the mattress the horse is sitting on giving the move an extra bounce.

And Kame decides it’s the best moment to bring some light into the whole thing. “The saddle you’re missing most likely had a dildo on it,” he says and his rich voice fills the room.

Ryo chokes. “What?”

Jin stops rocking, but doesn’t jump off the horse the way Kame kind of expected him to. The lack of reaction is a bit disappointing, if Kame is to be completely honest. His camera is running, but Jin’s not freaking out.

Jin’s only reaction is to shuffle a bit back and look down at the two holes in the leather covering the horse’s body.

“It’s like a sex toy?” Kame clarifies. “It’s a vibrating horse. There was a dildo attached to it at some point. You—” he stops himself and clears his throat, not quite meeting Jin’s eyes. “Someone would put money in, sit on it, and as the horse started vibrating and the dildo rotated with increasing frequency, the person was in for a wild ride.”

Not that Kame is an expert on this sort of things.

“Oh—my—god!” Ryo is wheezing, laughing so hard there are tears in his eyes, and he needs to lower his camera because his hands are shaking. “You just got fucked by a horse!”

Jin sits without moving. “I feel violated.”

Ryo wheezes. “Wait, I need to document this properly.”

They mess around for a bit, with Jin poking the holes where various add-ons could be attached, and Ryo trying to figure out how the whole machine once used to work. Kame stays out of it, listening with amusement to the number of dick jokes Ryo can come up with and the ease Jin either counters them or waves them off, all the while still sitting on that damn horse like it’s the most comfortable chair he’s ever planted his ass on.

“What’s going on here?” Meisa’s voice brings Kame back to reality.

The funny thing is he doesn’t remember spacing out, or what he was thinking about while he apparently wasn’t present.

He rubs his forehead.

“We found a vibrating horse.” As if that weren’t obvious enough.

Meisa glares at Jin and Ryo, now both on the bed. At least Jin has finally got up.

“Great,” Meisa sighs, “and you just had to ruin the set up, huh?”

“All the fun parts are gone though,” Jin tells her, as if that was the explanation she’s waiting for.

“Your ass is gonna live another day,” Ryo cracks up.

Jin chuckles. “Lucky me.” He turns his camera to his face. “Have you heard, guys? My ass is safe.”

Meisa, shaking her head and probably breaking at least 1/100 of the pedestal she’s put _Just Jin_ on, takes a few pictures, too.

“Hey, at least now it doesn’t look _too_ arranged,” Ryo offers helpfully. He snaps a picture of Meisa glaring at him. “This one’s definitely not for Instagram.”

The two of them are still bickering about pros and cons of arranging stuff inside abandoned buildings when they finally run into Yamapi some ten minutes later, following Kame through a long, mostly empty hallway to the far corner of the hotel complex. While they were too busy messing around with the giant horse-sex-toy, Yamapi accidentally stumbled upon the room Jin and Kame hoped to find.

There’s not much left though, to Kame’s disappointment.

Jin’s not happy about it either.

“What a bummer,” he groans, filming the crumbling pieces still stubbornly holding on to the walls while the rest has long fallen off and turned into dusty piles on the floor. “Can you see it, Jinsplorers? The room is completely destroyed. The part over there even looks like someone came here with a hammer and smashed it on purpose.”

“I don’t think it was necessary,” Kame tells him, as he’s filming just a couple of steps away. “For all the shiny, extravagant furnishing in here, the level of craftsmanship is actually pretty poor.”

“People didn’t come here to admire the décor,” Meisa says matter-of-factly, crouching down to take a picture of something lying on the floor.

“The décor was still a part of the game though,” Jin counters.

“That’s for sure.” At least they agree on that much.

Meisa stands up, pointing her camera at Jin. She’s got this look in her face, one Kame knows all too well, and he can almost, almost tell what’s to come next. When Meisa speaks, Kame is not disappointed. “Now, would _you_ come to a place like this for fun times, or nah?”

For a moment there, Kame has no control over his reactions, and his eyes dart in Jin’s direction. He wants to see this. It’s a joke, and Kame wants to smack himself for not having come up with it himself, because it’s definitely the kind of teasing he’d normally bother Pi with. He’d ask which one of the rooms would be Pi’s favorite, or if he’d take some inspiration from those now shattered engravings. But now it’s Meisa asking Jin, and Kame is so curious about the answer he almost forgets to breathe. It’s pretty silly, to be honest.

And it gets worse when Jin looks at him to meet Kame’s eyes as he answers. “I’d be definitely interested in that Mirror Room.”

Kame swallows.

The mental image of the couple rolling around the sheets in that very bed becomes less vague then, with one of the bodies suddenly gaining distinctive features of Jin’s sharp shoulders and dark messy hair with close-cut patches on the sides.

Kame frowns. He’s not getting that image out of his head any time soon, is he?

“Oh-oh!” Meisa grins.

“Oh-oh-what?” Yamapi asks at the same time as Kame mumbles, “Oh no,” and they look at each other and laugh.

Ryo glances at one, then the other, then at Jin.

Jin shrugs. “Look, I sat on that dildo-horse. Don’t kinkshame me for mirrors, okay?”

That makes Meisa laugh as well. “I would never!”

“Good,” Jin grimaces.

“That’s totally her there-are-ghosts face, brace yourself,” Pi chuckles when the worst of his laughing fit slowly wears off.

“What?” Jin’s eyes grow wide.

“Ghosts?” Ryo perks up and peers at Jin. “Now that’s something I want to know.”

“It’s said there’s a ghost of a young woman in the room with the mirrors. Her name is Hamiko,” Meisa says calmly, slowly looking from Kame to Pi to Ryo, and finally, to Jin where her gaze lingers a little longer. Meisa is good at a couple of things, and recognizing the best target in her audience is one of them. Ryo may be eager to hear all about the supernatural stuff going on in here, but Jin’s definitely the most receptive. “I’ve spoken to someone who saw her in one of the mirrors and she tried to communicate. They could read her lips, and all.”

“Man, that’s so cool!” Ryo gasp. “What did she say?”

Meisa shrugs. “She was waiting for a lover who never showed up. I guess she’s still waiting.”

“Did she kill herself in here?” Ryo asks eagerly.

“Really, dude?” There’s only a tiny hint of panic in Jin’s voice, and since no one else seems to notice, Kame decides he’s just over-analyzing it now. Over-analyzing Jin. “I _liked_ that room.”

Ryo makes a face.

“If it’s of any consolation, I don’t think she actually died here,” Meisa says.

“Aw, what a bummer,” Ryo mumbles.

“Don’t ghosts usually haunt places where they like… you know, became ghosts?” Pi asks, likely out of genuine curiosity and not in order to rile Jin up some more.

“Not always. Ghosts are attached to things they cared about. Sometimes it’s an object, other times a ghost sticks to a place they had the strongest connection to when they still lived. And Hamiko used to meet her lover in this hotel for years. Some say since she was a schoolgirl even.”

“Dude, that sounds like a manga plot!” Ryo grins. He’s liking this thing way too much. “A school uniform and all those mirrors… hmmm…”

Jin sighs again and gives up. “I officially don’t like that room anymore.”

“Oh come on! It’s a perfectly nice, kinky room. Sure, no animal sex toys, so I understand you can’t fully appreciate it—”

“Oh, shut up, Nishikido!”

Ryo walks over and pats Jin’s shoulder, while wrinkling his nose at Meisa and mouthing, “Ghosts aren’t his thing.” Then he lets his voice raise to a normal volume: “We should go back there. I want to check the mirrors! Hamiko-chan!”

Jin groans and smacks Ryo’s hand off his shoulder. “There are no ghosts. In the mirrors, or anywhere else.” With that Jin stomps out of the room without another word.

“He’s so easy!” Ryo chuckles.

Meisa raises an eyebrow. “You think it’s a joke?”

Ryo waves a hand dismissively. “A dead lady in a mirror is nothing. You should’ve seen him in this one asylum in West Virginia! He was jumping at the sight of his own shadow whenever wind grazed the windows because it sounded like a kid’s sobbing!”

While Meisa doesn’t look too impressed, Yamapi laughs and he and Ryo start thinking of places with some freaky horror lore attached to them to take Jin to next.

Kame really wants to join them—he’d be the first to dismiss this whole mirror-ghost episode as a nonsense, just like he does with every other story Meisa tells him during their exploring; but he can’t shake off the memory of Jin staring at the mirrors surrounding the bed earlier. He hasn’t really thought anything about it until now. And now it’s all he can think about.

-

When it’s time to part for the evening, Jin talks Kame into coming to the hotel with him. He’s got an extra _Jip’s_ hoodie in his room and he wants Kame to have it.

To his credit, Ryo didn’t actually nag Meisa about giving him one of her hoodies as well, even though Jin’s pretty sure his friend would love to just follow Meisa to her place, a hoodie being in the game, or not.

“Thanks for this,” Kame says, standing in the middle of Jin’s room and holding his new hoodie against his chest with both hands.

Jin grins at him. “No problem. I’ve got a few t-shirts with me as well, so I’m seriously considering doing a fan meet-up at some point.” He’s just not sure there would be enough people interested, or what the best place to organize such a thing would be.

“In the end the two weeks you’ve got here might not be enough.”

“Yeah, well, I can always come back, right?” Jin closes his suitcase with a few tugs on the zipper, and looks around.

The room is a mess of early morning chaos, because Jin had hardly enough time to brush his teeth and do something about his hair before he left to meet with Kame and Yamapi today. He also forgot about all that mess during the day and it pretty much punched him in the face a couple minutes ago when he entered the room, with Kame following suit. Not that Jin cares. From his experience, no one in the urban exploring community would judge him for any of this. They are all pretty much the same. Always more concerned about having their cameras and phones, and all batteries fully charged, than about making their beds and tucking away yesterday’s dirty clothes.

There are half empty water bottles on the vanity table by a window, heaps of clothes scattered all over the floor and chairs, Jin’s camera bag and his backpack are on the bed where he’s tossed them the first thing after walking in.

Jin gives the room another quick glance, then turns to Kame.

“Do you want a drink or something?” he asks.

He’s buzzing with the day’s events and experience, and isn’t really ready to put an end to it. He wants to ride this amazing feeling for a bit longer. And he doesn’t want to do it alone.

“We could check the pictures and some of the footage. You know, compare what we’ve got.”

Or they could even do some vlogging. That would be cool.

Jin’s been filming short entries ever since the decision to come to Japan was made and plane tickets were bought. It’s never more than five minutes, or so, of him sharing step-by-step preparations for the journey. Now he’s here and he kind of wants to tell the world that Kame knows the best Japanese abandoned spots.

Kame shrugs. “Why not. Pi and Ryo are most likely debating ghost manga anyway, so it’s not like I’m missing much.”

“Come on, now! You’d rather spend time with those two? I’m hurt.”

“Maybe I’d rather spend time with Meisa,” Kame teases. But he’s taking off his backpack, putting it down on the floor, and carefully placing his new hoodie on top of it.

“That’s fair.” Jin nods. Meisa is cool, a bit scary when she’s annoyed, as Jin had a chance to find out today, but still cool nonetheless—but right now, Jin is glad the one keeping him company is Kame.

They get some drinks and settle on the floor with their cameras and Jin’s laptop. Their backs rest against the bed, their legs stretched out, and they are surrounded by a dozen various cables to connect the computer and the cameras.

Kame’s comes first.

The data card still carries also some pictures from Kame’s previous adventures, and while Kame is trying to navigate Jin to the ones taken in the love hotel today, Jin gets curious and opens a folder dated a couple of days back.

They look through the photos. The laptop is sitting on Jin’s thighs, slightly angled sideways so Kame can see the monitor without too much color distortion. Sometimes it means Kame needs to lean in a bit closer, pressing his shoulder against Jin’s, sometimes it almost looks like the easiest way to do this would be for Kame to rest his head against Jin’s shoulder permanently. A couple of times Kame kind of does just that, without realizing it. Jin doesn’t flinch away, too absorbed in the pictures in front of him.

“I’m still editing the final video for this one,” Kame says, when Jin asks about the place the pictures were taken at.

Jin wouldn’t mind watching the raw material either, to be honest. He knows firsthand there’s something about all those little things and too long shoots that rarely make it to the twenty minute long videos that get eventually posted online. It’s also tough to pick and choose what to share with the viewers and what’s gonna get dismissed and just sit in a folder somewhere.

“You should definitely add some of the footage with the old photos.” Not that Kame actually needs any tips on how to edit videos. From everything Jin had a chance to see, Kame is as close to a professional as one can get. “Is it just me, or do old photographs kind of add this… I don’t know, realism? Like, you can actually see the people who existed in that place once upon a time. It’s not just an empty setting.”

Kame stares at the picture on the laptop screen, a shelf with a couple of framed black and white photos. He nods, lips pressed together. He’s quiet for a moment, then lets out a soft chuckle. “Meisa would tell you it’s because there are ghosts. Somewhere. Somehow.” He points at the screen. “One apparently moves some of the frames from one place to another in there, too.”

“Really?” Jin zooms in on one of the photographs. Two kids with a dog. “Did you see any moving frames?”

“As if!” Kame nudges Jin’s shoulder, this time leaning in on purpose.

Jin pushes back, bouncing Kame in the opposite direction. They laugh and stop only when the laptop in Jin’s lap dangerously wobbles and nearly topples over on to the floor.

“I need to keep you and Meisa apart! She can be very convincing when she starts the whole boo-boo storytelling.”

Convincing, hm.

Jin skips through a couple more pictures until he gets to the end of the folder. Then promptly opens the one created today.

“So you don’t believe in that stuff.” It’s not even a question. Jin’s seen enough of Kame’s reactions to already know the answer if it _were_ a question. Ghosts aren’t real. Of course they aren’t.

“I will believe when I see one.”

Noticing they are now looking at the new photos, Kame calms down and focuses on the screen again. His shoulder is pressed against Jin’s, and Jin can smell the faint scent of citrusy shampoo and dust in Kame’s hair.

It’s a little weird for a second because Jin’s not usually one to notice those things, and he definitely doesn’t go around sniffing guys to know what shampoo they use. Not that he’s _sniffing_ Kame’s hair deliberately. It’s just right there, in his personal space.

Then they start looking through the photos taken earlier that day, and Jin’s thoughts take a sharp turn. Away from shampoos and wondering what Kame’s hair might feel under his fingers, and more towards the adventure they went on.

The outdoor pictures are pretty decent, given there wasn’t really much to see in the middle of all the overgrown greenery. Jin was switching between filming and taking photos, and now his fingers itch to start posting everything on Instagram right away. One picture after another. His followers would either go mad with excitement, or unfollow him for excessive spamming. With the wide variety of reasons people follow his social media, Jin can imagine either is possible.

“I still can’t get over how well preserved the whole site is,” Jin says after a moment. It will never stop amazing him. “You’d never find something like that in the States. Fucking vandals will go any length to put a tag on everything, just to show they were there.” He tells Kame about this one tiny town in the middle of nowhere that seemed perfectly locked up in time, surrounded by nothing but mountains and a forest, but when they finally got close enough, the first thing they saw was fucking graffiti all over the place. Someone must’ve hiked for hours just to ruin the place.

“I’d still love to see that someday.”

Jin looks at Kame. “Then you should totally come visit. We could go on a roadtrip and check out some cool stuff!”

Jin isn’t one to plan his life too much ahead, because where’s the fun in doing that, but right now the gears in his head are spinning fast, already planning all sorts of scenarios for when Kame arrives to the States. For Jin, it’s not a matter of _if_ but rather, _when_. He’s got some stuff lined up for the following month or so after coming back from Japan, a trip he didn’t really plan either, but after that, everything is fair game. If Kame just calls him one day to tell him he’s getting on a plane the following morning, Jin will be more than ready to pick him up at the airport.

Which is, after all, pretty much a reverse situation of what happened with Jin’s trip over here.

“Really?” Kame perks up, forgetting about the laptop for a moment.

“Sure. It seems fair, doesn’t it? And if your friends want to join you, they definitely should. Though I probably don’t have enough couches you all could sleep on.”

“You do have hotels over there though, right?”

“Yeah, well. But we’re friends now, and I don’t let my friends stay in hotels when they could as well stay at my place.” The apartment isn’t big, but he’s previously fitted up three people just fine. Sure, one of them was his girlfriend at the time and she didn’t need an extra bed, but that’s a detail, and if Kame eventually comes with both Yamapi and Meisa, they will figure something out.

Kame gives him a bright smile. “That’s so cool! You’ll have to show me all the supposedly haunted stuff so I can then tell Meisa.”

“Oh-oh! Why is everyone so obsessed with ghosts?”

“Because it’s fun?” Kame shrugs and reaches out to the laptop to skip the next few pictures that show mostly the overgrown front yard of the love hotel. At the same time, Jin’s hand moves as well and they collide halfway over the keyboard. Jin chuckles and Kame mumbles, “Sorry,” then pulls his hand back, letting Jin do the key pressing and setting up the pace of the picture changes.

“Meisa seems to take it all pretty seriously though. Making it sound like there really might be something out of this world. I mean, _photo frames changing location_? For real?”

“It’s a well-known place, people go there all the time. They may not spray all over the walls, but they still want to leave a mark.”

“Maybe,” Jin admits, but he’s not convinced. He doesn’t want to believe in ghosts, but some of the stories are so titillating it’s hard to just wave them off like it’s nothing. “What about the lady in the hotel today? There are real people who saw her and even communicated with her.”

Kame looks at Jin with a raised eyebrow. “People will tell you all sorts of things.”

Jin unplugs Kame’s camera and connects his own, then taps at the keyboard a few times, searching for the right photo. “I saw… _something_.—Don’t laugh.—Way before Meisa said anything about the place being haunted or about the ghost showing up in the Mirror Room. I saw something.”

He skips past more pictures, looking for one particular photo.

“Like what exactly?”

That’s cool. At least Kame is not laughing or telling him it’s a complete nonsense. Sure, Kame probably still thinks just that, but Jin’s grateful Kame isn’t saying it aloud. Because a big part of Jin also thinks it’s pretty stupid. It’s the part that always leads him into the next abandoned place with lead-based paint creepily peeling off mold-infested walls and corroded window hinges shrieking under the tiniest gust of draught. It’s the part that assures him the biggest danger at those places is black mold, or property owners unexpectedly showing up and threatening to call the police because yes, the whole trespassing thing is something people often take seriously, even though Jin never enters the premises with an intent to steal anything.

Jin wishes the rational part of him had a better command over the other part that gets all jumpy at weird sounds, and that likes to be enticed into believing there’s something that can’t be simply explained with reason in this world.

And it’s this other part of him that knows exactly what he saw earlier in one of the mirrors.

“I don’t know, _something_ ” he hears himself saying when he finally finds the right photo. It’s a picture of the bed surrounded by mirrors. Jin remembers filming the whole thing in one long shoot, slowly taking in the differences between where the mirrors were still intact and where there was nothing left anymore, just the wooden frame and possibly some shards. Then he switched to the photo mode to zoom in on some of the intricate decorations.

And she was right there.

“A lady in a kimono. Standing in the far corner behind me. She raised a hand, like she was trying to reach out.”

Jin could see her as clearly as he can see Kame now, but there’s nothing in the picture. He’s not even sure what he was hoping to find. Proof there was a ghost in the room with them today? Proof he didn’t just make it all up? That it wasn’t a play of lights and shadows later intensified by Meisa’s story?

Jin rubs the side of his nose, squinting his eyes at the laptop screen.

To his surprise, Kame leans closer to look as well.

“Maybe you saw me and didn’t realize right away the angles and lights and shadows?”

That would be certainly an option. But. But Kame was already on his way out of the door. Nowhere behind Jin to be reflected in the mirror. And then there’s this. “Were you wearing a kimono though?”

“Not today.” Kame nudges Jin’s shoulder. “I could wear one tomorrow if you ask nicely.”

“Really?”

Now Jin really wants to see that. No more ghosts. He wants to see Kame looking all traditional and serious—quite a contrast to his current stylish looks of a cool anime character. With his perfect hair and his spot-on sense of fashion.

Jin chuckles at the thought.

All those hours of watching stuff with Ryo must’ve seriously damaged his brain.

Kame slides a little lower against the bed, relaxing. “Well, it’s not the most comfortable piece of clothing to wear for exploring places, but I do own one or two. My parents insisted.”

“Now I want to see that.”

Kame rolls his eyes. “I look ridiculous.”

Jin carefully puts the laptop on the side and bends his knees. He was just starting to feel the tingle of incoming cramping.

“That’s unlikely the case.” His head tilts back against the bed and he lets it rest there, turned just slightly to the side so he can watch Kame’s face.

Kame watches right back.

He doesn’t say anything, and Jin’s not sure where to go from there. They were just talking rubbish about ghosts and now Jin can’t stop thinking about how attractive Kame would look in fine clothes. That’s not something Jin usually thinks about in relation to guys. Meisa, Meisa would look incredible in a kimono, too, but strangely enough, that particular aesthetic doesn’t hold Jin’s attention without him willfully forcing the image into his head. Meanwhile, mental images of Kame appear on their own and with shocking ease.

Jin carefully steers the conversation to Kame’s family then, because that seems like a safe topic. And he’s curious. Curious about who Kame is and what he likes, and sure, Jin already knows plenty just from having watched a number of Kame’s videos, but Kame’s voice has this husky tilt to it when he tries to express something personal in English, and Jin could probably listen to Kame talking all night.

Which is, coincidentally, exactly what happens.

Kame talking about his big family is only one step from Jin talking about his parents and brother Reio, and before they know it, it’s past midnight and they are eating take-outs and drinking beer, and Jin is just tipsy enough to tell Kame about this one time back in his high school senior year when he went down on a guy at some party, because he wanted to figure out if he was into girls because being into girls was expected from him, or whether it was just the way he is.

Kame laughs so hard he spills some of his beer, and it gets even worse because Jin grins and says, “It was a complete disaster, of course, because no amount of experimental porn watching can prepare you for what it’s like to have a dick in your mouth.” That turns Kame’s laugher into hysterics and he’s just wheezing and choking on the last bite of noodles he swallowed.

“I’ve never done it again,” Jin admits between chuckles.

“Would you though?” Kame asks, peering at Jin from under bangs of hair that no longer hold a shape and are falling messily into his face.

Jin shrugs. “I don’t know. Never really thought about it.” Then he narrows his eyes. “What about you?”

Kame’s face heats up, and Jin forgets to laugh because he’s too busy looking.

Kame slowly shakes his head, eyes cast down to his food. He pokes a piece of shrimp with his chopsticks a few times. He mumbles, “Definitely never had a dick in my mouth,” and the words are hardly audible, but Jin hears them anyway.

It’s been a while since Jin laughed so much he felt tears rolling down his cheeks.

-

Kame wakes up before his alarm has a chance to go off, and he’s momentarily disoriented about where he is and what happened. He’s lying in a strange bed, his yesterday’s clothes still on, and through the haze of his just awakened brain, he is distantly aware of someone softly snoring next to him.

The jeans are scratchy and rough against his skin. He hates sleeping with clothes on.

With a groan, he turns over and blinks his eyes open to see what’s going on.

Jin is sprawled all over his side of the bed, messy dark hair covering most of his face, his lips slightly parted. He’s wearing one of his ‘Jip’s’ t-shirts and baggy pants he had on yesterday as well. The t-shirt is rolled up a bit, revealing a fine stripe of skin and a seductive trail of soft dark hair from the belly-button down under the waistband. Kame’s sleepy eyes are drawn to the sight, and his stomach feels a little funny, because he shouldn’t be ogling Jin like that. For so many reasons.

Only he is.

His eyes flick back to Jin’s face. Jin’s lips.

Kame didn’t lie last night. He’s never experimented the way Jin apparently has. He’s never even considered it to be an option, but now he’s curious.

It’s stupid and silly, and just because they talked about that stuff doesn’t mean Jin would be… interested. Or willing. Or whatever.

Kame quietly groans and covers his face with his hands.

“Mmm…morning,” Jin mumbles in reply to the sound Kame’s made.

“Um. Hey.”

“I think we’ve got the whole sleeping arrangements thing figured out now.” Jin’s voice sounds husky with a low underlying chuckle. He hasn’t made an attempt to move yet. When Kame glances in his direction, Jin’s eyes are still closed, one arm thrown up above his head, the other resting on the bare skin of his stomach, covering the sight Kame has been so drawn to before.

“What?”

Kame tries to tell himself he’s not disappointed about the loss of the view.

He probably is, though.

Jin looks at him, eyes half-lidded. “You and me fit on a double bed just fine. You didn’t even kick me.”

“Maybe it was you who did all the kicking,” Kame chuckles and flings a leg out to Jin’s half of the bed, hitting Jin’s shin through the blanket.

Jin rolls over surprisingly swiftly, landing on his side and trapping Kame’s leg under his own. The movement also brings Jin much closer; he’s practically hovering over Kame now. Kame presses the back of his head into the pillow, his eyes suddenly wide. What the hell is Jin doing?

Their eyes meet.

Jin grins.

“I need a shower,” Kame says quickly, squirming to get out from under Jin’s leg and the blanket. Then he groans, remembering where he is. “And some clean clothes and a toothbrush.” Jin’s closeness makes him self-conscious.

Finally, the weight of Jin’s leg lifts up. It’s both a relief and something Kame immediately misses. Just for a heartbeat though. Then his brain kicks in.

“I think they sell toiletries downstairs in the reception,” Jin says as he sits up. “And you can have one of my t-shirts.”

“Thanks.”

Some forty minutes later they are both showered, dressed, and almost done packing their cameras and the rest of the equipment. Jin’s ‘Jip’s’ hoodie must be one of the most comfy pieces of wardrobe Kame currently owns, even if it’s one size too big for him. Kame catches Jin’s eyes on him a few times, but there are no funny remarks about Kame being too small or skinny—which he is not, thank you very much, but he’s also nowhere near the size category of his giants of brothers.

Jin gets a text from Ryo telling him they’ll meet at the train station, because Ryo isn’t in the hotel.

Jin doesn’t think twice about it, putting it down to Ryo having gone out early to catch some nice morning light. It wouldn’t be the first time. During the roadtrip Ryo was the one disappearing for hours, on one or two occasions even days, and then coming back with amazing photos.

Only when they arrive to the station, both Jin and Kame holding cups with hot coffee, Ryo isn’t there alone.

“Well, this is a little awkward,” Jin laughs.

Ryo is standing there, chatting with Meisa, and the whole situation is even better because Ryo is wearing an ‘EXPLORE WITH MEisa’ hoodie. It’s a black one with a hot pink print.

That means there was no manga discussion between Yamapi and Ryo.

Both Meisa and Ryo immediately notice the change, and also the lack of thereof, in Kame’s clothes.

Ryo shoots Jin a grimace. “You’re the one to talk.”

“We were going through the material from yesterday,” Kame promptly explains, which only earns him a raised eyebrow from Meisa. Kame shakes his head. Meisa has literally zero reasons to make any assumptions—but she apparently does, which only makes Kame wonder, what could give her a reason to do so.

“Whatever you say,” Meisa grins.

“Anyway,” Kame says, looking around until he sees the train timetable. “Everyone ready to leave the city?” When he turns to Meisa, he’s all business. “Have you talked to Pi?”

She still has this look in her face that assures Kame they will definitely have a chat later, but at least for now she’s willing to let it go. It’s good, because Kame has no idea what to tell her. Any version of what really happened will only make her more curious, and the teasing will get worse. Kame knows his friends too well.

“He’ll meet with us at the location.” Then she smirks. “At least someone slept in his own bed last night.”

“Hey, I did, too,” Jin says quickly. “Well, it was my hotel bed, but still.”

“Can we drop this, please?” Kame mutters.

According to the timetable, their train should be there in five minutes, which means anything from right now to half an hour.

Kame ignores Meisa’s inquiring gaze.

What he can’t ignore, however, is Jin’s hand rubbing his shoulder and arm. Jin doesn’t really comment on the gesture, though, as if it was meant only for Kame and the less the others notice, the better, so Kame decides to swallow the question itching at the tip of his tongue. What the hell is Jin doing?

“So, will someone finally tell us where we’re going today?” Jin asks.

The object of the trip is Mt. Tsukuba, the other Tokyo mountain besides Mt. Fuji; and even more precisely, an old abandoned amusement park lying peacefully halfway up to its peak. Kame loves closed down amusement parks, with their eerie atmosphere of once lively places that are now quiet and forgotten, just waiting for someone to tear them all down.

But then again, Kame also loves abandoned houses with memories of people who once lived there. He loves closed hospitals and schools that used to serve their local communities until they were no longer needed for one reason or another. Every abandoned place carries an imprint of lives that once touched it, from the people who built them to the people who stepped foot in their door.

Places and human lives are entwined one with the other.

They meet Pi at the station at the beginning of the trail up the mountain, and from there it’s a nice, quite easy hike through a forest littered with odd frog statues at almost every step, and amazing views into the landscape with the Tokyo skyline on the horizon.

The park is nestled halfway up the hill, and provides just the right combination of decay and glimpses of its once cute glory.

Meisa and Ryo keep their distance from each other so obviously that Pi actually asks what happened between the two of them. A question that leads to Jin laughing so hard he has to stop filming for a moment, and Kame nearly chokes around a simple, “Nothing happened.” He doesn’t sound convincing.

Meisa eventually corners him while he’s taking pictures of a broken carousel with various anime characters instead of simple and traditional horses.

“You know you can tell me anything, right?” She’s standing just out of the picture, because even with her clear intentions to nag Kame about things that aren’t her business, she knows better than to ruin a good photo.

Kame keeps messing with the zoom and filter settings. “Nothing to tell.”

Meisa is quiet for a moment, and then it’s out. “I slept with Ryo.”

Kame is not getting the photo this time. He puts the camera down and looks up at Meisa. “Good for you, I guess. I didn’t sleep with anyone.”

She steps closer. “Do you want to, though?”

“ _What?_ ”

“I wouldn’t judge.” She shrugs and nods somewhere behind Kame. A quick glance over his shoulder reveals Jin’s getting closer, filming everything and talking to himself—to his viewers. There’s the now familiar, “What’s up, Jinsplorers?” again.

Kame shakes his head. “No.”

-

The next few days is a wild ride of travelling and visiting exciting spots. From an old, nearly untouched school high in the hills, to a number of empty factories, to a newly closed hospital with almost everything left behind as it was, to spots with a rather creepy, bloody past Meisa is more than happy to tell them all about.

Jin quickly learns her knowledge about supernatural elements and backgrounds of the places they visit is not just vast, but seemingly endless.

Every place seems to have a haunted history, or a residing ghost.

And Jin always gets chills as soon as Meisa starts telling them about one of them.

On Friday Yamapi excuses himself from their plans for the day because he has a family thing he can’t miss, and while Meisa takes Ryo to Osaka to show him one of the best abandoned spots in Japan, Jin talks Kame into changing their program and instead of joining Meisa and Ryo, the two of them head north to the Western Village in Nikko.

He read about it and saw videos from other urban explorers, and now when he’s practically at its doorstep, he can’t miss the opportunity.

It’s a nice, warm day that promises great conditions for filming and photography.

He and Kame are getting along really great, too. To the point where Jin’s already thinking about how he will miss the other guy once it’s time to go back home.

The two of them have been pretty much inseparable in the last few days. Two out of three nights Kame spent in Jin’s room as they were revising the footage they filmed, and hashing out thoughts and ideas.

Kame’s sense for detail and background knowledge of the places he’s taken Jin to is something to be admired and often also to be envious of. And when also Meisa’s ghost stories are added to the mix, Jin is not sure any of his Japanese videos will fit under his usual twenty minutes in length. But screw it; he will not leave anything out just because of a detail such as time duration he set up himself anyway. One can break their own rules.

One of those rules, as it turns out, might be also always being a professional while filming a location.

The Western Village might as well be one of the coolest things Jin has ever seen. So many of its attractions are still there, nearly untouched by either time or vandals, that Jin isn’t sure where to start. Kame somehow obtained an old printed visitor guide with a map of the park, and Jin wants to see it all. From the saloon to the prison to the freaking replica of Mount Rushmore.

“Fucking unbelievable,” Jin breathes out the moment they get inside.

There’s a whole old western village with wooden buildings and square front gables, with life-sized figurines still inside, dressed in uniforms or cowboy clothes.

They go from one place to another, finding a bank, a sheriff station, a saloon with four figurines and a giant teddy bear sitting around a poker table, a town hall, a nondescript building housing more teddy bears wearing a variety of ridiculous costumes from Southern Belle lace dresses to Abraham Lincoln.

Jin finds a big panda shaped car in another building, brought over there from a nearby animal ride, and it doesn’t take much for Kame to talk him into getting in for a silly photo op.

“If you tell me there should be a dick somewhere on that panda, I’m gonna kick your ass,” Jin warns with a chuckle, but he’s also already crawling into the car.

Kame laughs. “None that I’m aware of.”

Jin loves that place.

And it’s more than that. He loves that he’s there with Kame, who is just as much excited to get inside every building they find and that can be accessed without having to be actually broken into.

Jin doesn’t mind crawling into places through broken windows, but he would never be the one to break one just to get in. He may be reckless at times, sometimes he moves objects around for aesthetic reasons, but he’s not a vandal.

Even now, getting seated in the damn panda car, he is very much conscious of every creak and crunch the structure makes under his weight, because not only doesn’t he want to get hurt, he also doesn’t want to break the car. There will be others coming here after him, and they should find the place in the best possible shape.

Because this place is amazing.

“Definitely worth the top ten on my list of best places visited,” Kame says later when they’ve seen most of the park and are now just casually walking around and enjoying the quiet and the unique atmosphere of the place.

“Mine too,” Jin agrees instantly. Then chuckles. “Damn. I say that about almost every place I go to.”

“You’ve seen some pretty sick places, so it’s no wonder.”

Jin stops and looks at Kame. “We’ve seen some pretty sick places together these past few days.”

His time in Japan is quickly coming to an end. It’s been such a fun that he hasn’t quite realized it yet. Two more days, and then it’s time to get on the plane.

A grin slowly spreads across Kame’s face. “I’ve saved the best for last.”

“I can’t imagine what could top this.” Jin spreads his hands and turns around to encompass it all.

Kame has been the best guide.

“How about more ghosts?” Kame chuckles.

-

Somewhere in the midst of the busy days of Jin’s visit, Kame actually found time to watch some of Jin’s videos—not as much picking at random as he originally intended, but going purposely straight to the series Jin filmed about American abandoned asylums. It’s an intriguing topic and Jin seems to have seen it all, filmed it all.

However, there’s definitely one place he hasn’t been to yet.

A place that’s been sitting on Kame’s bucket list for a few months already. He can’t really remember why he hasn’t done it yet, but now he’s glad he’s kept postponing the visit in spite of his followers frequent demands.

Maybe it’s because he’s been meant to wait for Jin’s visit. A silly thought, right?

“Unlike most Western countries, Japan isn’t littered with huge abandoned structures that used to serve as mental asylums. While places like the US or the UK built massive structures where they could tuck away socially unadaptable people under the pretense of treating them, families in Japan were expected to take care of their own, even if taking care, in fact, meant locking those individuals into small, dark, dirty sheds, and losing the key,” Kame tells into the camera. Just saying those words aloud makes him queasy. “There is, however, one facility with a past as dark as those place across the ocean.”

It’s not an easy topic.

More so because there are places where this and similar kind of abuse has continued way into the modern day. Into the times Kame actually remembers because he was already born. He was attending school.

“In retrospect, with everything that’s known about the treatments of people in mental asylums in the 19th century and way into the 20th century, neither country can claim moral victory in regards of their way of handling the situation.”

He takes a breath and looks to the left where Jin is crouching in front of his camera sitting on the ground, filming his own intro.

This time, Jin’s, “Hey, what’s up, Jinsplorers?” is unusually subdued. He’s not bouncing around, even though the excitement about being about to explore a new place is clear in his voice nonetheless.

Less than an hour away from Tokyo, up north in Saitama, they are about to enter what’s known as Asakura Hospital, a shadow of shame hovering thick over the concept of psychiatric care in Japan.

“This is the most haunted place around here. Probably second to Aokigahara,” Meisa says in the passing, her camera pointed at the main entrance. “I’m like, totally hyped up to go inside.”

“That’s because you’re insane,” Pi laughs.

Ryo perks up and nearly runs over. “I want to hear all about it!”

“Huh-uh, not now. Trust me, you want to see what’s inside first.” Meisa is the one leading the way to the main door, and from her confident stride one could easily come to the conclusion that she’s been here before.

Jin catches up with Kame and they walk side by side.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this. Again.”

“Just don’t let Meisa get into your head. She’s gonna enjoy this one way too much.” Kame can imagine her having spent the previous evening glued to her laptop, frantically searching for as many creepy ghost stories associated with this place as possible. And her ghost loving online community was more than happy to chip in, no doubt.

Jin purses his lips. “Easier said than done.”

The first floor is a dark mess of broken glass and scattered papers, a muddy mix of old indecipherable hospital records and pages torn from manga books. There’s no way to make any sense of it.

“Holy shit!” Jin gasps, looking around. “Now this is something I didn’t expect.”

The walls are actually covered in graffiti; something they haven’t really run into during their exploring in the last couple days. Now they are presented with colorful scribbles, anguished faces, and a variety of messages telling them, _there’s nothing to do here but die_ , and, _save those who can’t be saved_. No one doubts it’s been written by explorers who came here before, or even some of those pseudo ghost hunters, who simply wanted to add some scare effects to their videos. Even with the knowledge of the origin of those messages, however, those words can easily send a chill down one’s spine.

“You can tell it’s a pretty popular site,” Meisa says, unamused. In her books, spraying random shit on walls is pretty much in the line of stealing knick-knacks and otherwise ruining decaying places. “The rumors about the reasons for its closure in 2001 spread like wildfire, and every self-proclaimed ghost hunter wanted to find out how many of those who died here due to severe mistreatment didn’t actually leave for good.”

“And the conclusion?” Ryo asks, winking meaningfully at Jin. “Are we likely to run into ghosts here or nah?”

“A number of them, in fact,” Meisa nods. “There’s an old guy in a wheelchair who likes to race with whoever enters the second floor hallway. Then a nurse who was killed by two patients out of control just before the hospital was closed.”

“Oh man, we should definitely go find the wheelchair racer.” Ryo rummages through his backpack and pulls out a small flashlight.

“We haven’t come here for ghosts,” Jin mutters.

“Speak for yourself,” Ryo grins.

“And then there’s the basement,” Meisa says quietly. “That’s probably the worst part about this place. If ghosts are real, then they are down there.”

“Time to go to the basement then!” Ryo cheers and points his flashlight to the nearest hallway opening. “Anyone knows where it is?”

A prickle at the nape of his neck makes Kame think twice about following Ryo down the hallway straight to the belly of the beast, but with everyone else already on the move, he doesn’t want to be left behind.

Maybe he should take his own advice to heart and not let Meisa’s words into his head.

Jin, two steps ahead, glances over his shoulder and gives Kame a little smile. Like he can read Kame’s mind and wants to assure him this is just another adventure. And while Jin can’t read Kame’s mind, the part about this being just another exploring adventure is hundred percent right.

It’s hardly the first basement Kame is going into.

Right.

Only it’s unlike _any_ of the basements Kame has been in before.

Seen through a modern day’s eyes, there is literally zero reason for a hospital to have a basement that looks like a freaky dungeon with little to no light, narrow corridors lined with prison-like cells with metal bars instead of walls or doors, and to add to the already eerie effect of the silent place, someone arranged wheelchairs all around the place, some left in the hallway, others sitting inside the cells.

“Hoo, creepy,” Ryo makes a noise, his voice, while not purposely loud, kind of thunders through the place.

Yamapi wanders off to do his thing first. He’s clearly enthralled by the visuals around and wants to document as much as possible.

Little by little they all split up. In the narrow spaces it will be inevitable to eventually walk into someone else’s photos, but there are still ways to avoid most of the interactions. The place deserves to be captured in its quiet, empty beauty.

Kame doesn’t start filming right away.

He walks down the corridor, tips of his fingers gently grazing the metal bars on his right. He stops in front of one of the cells, then starts walking again with a frown forming on his forehead.

While open, the hospital had a reputation of accepting ‘unwanted’ citizens, and one can only assume how widely understood that concept could’ve been. With little to no oversight, anyone could become ‘unwanted’. Patients rejected by other hospitals for whatever reasons, healthy people from uncaring families, those whose lifestyle didn’t match societal expectations, or simply people living on the street.

A shiver runs down Kame’s spine.

How many innocent lives must have been lost in the dark pits of this god forsaken place?

He stops in front of another cell and looks inside. The space is tiny, hardly enough room for a bed—if those locked up in here even had a bed to sleep on. It’s dark and cold, and probably wasn’t much better back in the day. The walls are covered with dark brown smudges.

“That’s blood of those who tried to kill themselves by running against the walls.” Meisa’s voice comes from out of nowhere, just behind Kame, and startles him so much his first reaction is to bolt forward, hitting the cell bars in front of him.

“Fuck,” Kame groans and rubs his arm that took the worst hit.

“Sorry,” Meisa says, though she doesn’t really sound too sorry. “I thought you saw me coming.”

“Not really.”

“I was just…” Kame sighs. Thinking. He was thinking.

“People sometimes hear noises here. Stuff that sounds like something repeatedly thumping against the walls.”

Kame quickly shakes his head. “Nonsense.”

Meisa gives him a look, but doesn’t comment further. “There are records telling that people actually did die down here from severe traumas.”

Kame’s fingers curl around one of the bars. “That’s awful.”

“I don’t say this often, but this whole place should be torn down,” Meisa says after a moment, now looking inside the cell as well. Seeing the same dark spots Kame sees. “It just seems with all this prison and suffering around, _if_ there are any ghosts, they are trapped here forever.”

Kame doesn’t really believe in ghosts, but as a concept, the idea of being trapped in a place like this forever is a nightmare. He shudders.

When Meisa leaves him alone, he stays motionless for what seems both a forever and a blink of an eye. He should start filming.

Opening the door into the cell, he enters and picks up his camera. Starting the next segment from inside one of the underground cells seems like a great idea.

It’s cold in there.

He looks around, searching for holes in the walls that would indicate there was some sort of heating in here once upon a time, but all he sees are the damn dark stains. No heating. The realization makes him actually sick..

“Hey guys, welcome to a place from your worst nightmares,” he says when the camera starts recording. “A place that made people feel so desperate they’d rather bash their head against a wall than spend another day in here.”

From there it seems to be getting easier. Kame moves around the cell, filming details that may never make the final cut, but since he’s already here, he wants to film it all. It’s a shameful past, but it’s a past that shouldn’t be forgotten—it shouldn’t be forgotten for the very reason of being shameful. For once people might learn a lesson and not repeat past mistakes.

He’s so engrossed in what he’s doing that he misses the sound of approaching steps and only notices Jin when he turns around to film the bars.

Jin is standing there, a silent figure looming in the door.

Kame gasps in surprise and staggers, taking a small step back. “Fucking hell. Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

_Ryu?_

Jin tilts his head.

“Ryo?” Kame frowns. “No idea where he’s gone.”

Jin tilts his head to the other side.

_Ryu._

Something is not right. “Jin?” Kame asks carefully.

Then Jin is moving forward, taking two, three long steps to cut the distance between the door and the spot Kame seems to be glued to.

There are warm hands on his cheeks, holding his head in place and then Jin’s kissing him, lips pressed to lips with urgency that sweeps Kame by surprise, leaving him frozen and unable to protest, until he doesn’t want to protest at all because he’s returning the kiss. His arms wind around Jin’s waist, pulling him closer, body against body, a burning center in the middle of the dead-cold cell. The kiss is all tongue and teeth and gasps, and someone should really start breathing here because there’s not enough air.

_Ryu…_

Kame archs against Jin, feels Jin’s fingers gripping his hair with something near desperation and hunger for more and longing.

Kame bites Jin’s lip without meaning to.

_Hayato…_

The voice in his head is hardly audible, yet it thunders through Kame’s mind with a bang. Kame struggles to pull away, forcing his hand between him and Jin and pushing against Jin’s chest to separate them.

Jin grunts in protest at first, but then something seems to snap into place and he abruptly steps back. His eyes are wide and his kiss-swollen lips parted in an unspoken question.

Kame has trouble breathing.

He runs a hand through his hair.

“What the fuck was that?” He doesn’t quite recognize his own voice.

“I…” Jin takes a breath, but comes with no answer. He seems to be as confused as Kame. Something is definitely not right here.

Kame licks his lips. He can taste Jin, on his lips, in his mouth. It’s like Jin’s fingers are still clutching his hair. “Um.”

“That was…” Jin rubs his forehead. “I’m sorry.” He’s turning around to leave when he seems to think about something really hard for a moment there, and it makes him look at Kame again. “Who is Hayato?”

-

Jin doesn’t know what to say. Kame’s lips are seared into his own, though he doesn’t quite remember when and why they kissed in the first place.

That said, it’s not like Jin _regrets_ the kiss happened—quite the opposite. If he ever wanted to kiss another guy, then it would definitely be Kame. The idea might’ve even crossed his mind once or twice over the last week. Jin just hasn’t made the conscious decision to allow himself to think about it.

And then, apparently, he wasn’t thinking at all. He just did it.

“I don’t know. Who is Ryu?” Kame breaks the awkward silence that quickly threatens to stretch between them.

Ryu?

“Never heard of him.” Jin shrugs. His eyes keep flicking to Kame’s lips and he has to will them to look elsewhere.

Kame bites his lip. It’s almost like he’s drawing Jin’s attention on purpose. Tempting him.

“That’s weird.”

Jin nods. Weird indeed. “We should probably…”

“—find the others. Yes.”

Anything that will get them out of this fucking cell with no room to breathe or think. Jin wastes no time to step back into the main hallway. The only difference is the metal bars now being in front of him instead of behind his back, but he can actually _feel_ the air filling his lungs.

When Kame follows him outside, they both seem to make sure there’s some space between them.

They find Meisa, Ryo, and Yamapi in the cell at the very end of the hallway, all three of them hunched over a desk covered with papers and black and white sheets of x-ray scans.

“Where have you been, you lovebirds?” Meisa sing-songs.

Kame winces.

Jin’s fingers curl tighter around his camera. Meisa can’t know. Can she?

“Have you found anything interesting?” Kame asks instead of answering the teasing. Probably the most clever thing to do.

Ryo runs a hand over the mess on the table. “Interesting? Man, this is sick. Like, look at this.” He picks up one of the scans and holds it against his flashlight.

It’s a human skull, pictured from the side. Another scan sheet shows another skull. Then another, and one more. The last one is different even to Jin’s untrained eye. There’s a dark spot on its forehead, with thin cracks running out in all directions. It almost looks like a kid’s drawing of a weirdly distorted sun. Something Jin would’ve drawn when he was a boy, and his drawing skills probably never really improved ever since then. No wonder his career as an art student ended way before it ever had a chance to start properly.

A small tag in the corner of the scan reads _5/9/82-OR_. An identification number that no longer identifies anything or anyone.

Ryo tosses the sheet back on the pile.

“This place actually gives me the creeps,” he says seriously. “I hate to say it but I don’t think I want to find the wheelchair racer ghost anymore.”

Jin feels a lump in his throat. “Same here.”

Even Ryo feels something is wrong here. That must be the first.

Jin watches as Meisa gently touches Ryo’s hand.

“We should probably go,” she says softly. “Leave the ghosts alone.”

It’s like something cold touches Jin’s shoulder, and he’s too afraid to look, because just maybe, this time, he’d actually see something for real.

-

Kame stares at the screen of his laptop, unable to look away. He’s tried. Several times. He told himself to check his phone, to take Ran-chan out for a walk, then he wanted to go and make some tea—though to be fair, what he probably really needs right now is something way stronger than tea. He also wanted to just get up and _do something_. Anything.

Yet, here he is.

Staring at the damn screen.

The only thing he’s capable of is playing the video over and over again.

It doesn’t make any sense.

Kame closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He plays the video one more time. Like it could make a difference. Like he might see something other than what he’s watched the previous fifty-odd times. Like there would be a previously missed explanation popping up in the middle of the screen this time.

Then he’s on his feet, ignoring his dog’s whines and instead putting on a jacket and tucking his laptop into a bag, and he doesn’t quite remember how he’s made it all the way over to Jin’s hotel, but he’s there.

Earlier today, when they left the hospital and returned to Tokyo, Kame wanted to be alone. Or rather, he needed some distance from Jin. He needed to think. Only he was thinking too much about a certain kiss which wasn’t really helpful, so he opened his laptop to go over the footage and pictures... which helped even less.

In fact, it completely messed him up.

So now he’s knocking on Jin’s door, hoping for who-the-fuck-knows-what.

Hoping Jin might make a sense of any of this.

The door opens and Jin’s standing there; wearing shorts and nothing else, a towel hanging over his head and covering damp hair.

“Oh.”

Kame remembers to breathe and not to stare. “Hi.”

“You okay?” Jin asks, sounding worried. Which is bad because it means Kame probably looks the way he feels.

“I... don’t know. Can I come in?” He scrapes his teeth over his lower lip. “Please.”

Jin steps back. “Sure.”

When the door closes, Kame watches Jin rummage around the mess all over the room, find a t-shirt, and put it on. That’s better, because at least Kame can now focus on what he’s come here for instead of being distracted by Jin’s bare skin.

Though a tiny voice in his head reminds him he wouldn’t be against getting distracted by Jin’s bare skin later.

That doesn’t help much either.

“What’s going on?” Jin asks. “Is it about...?”

“Yeah.” Kame takes off his backpack and starts pulling out the laptop. “No. I mean. Yes.”

“Hey, calm down.” Jin’s hand closes around Kame’s wrist to stop the jerky moves Kame doesn’t realize he’s been making in poor attempts to pull the zipper all the way down and open the backpack enough to take the laptop out. “What happened? I mean, besides... you know.”

Kame finally stops long enough to look at Jin. “That’s the thing. _That_ happened.”

“Look, I know with all those dick jokes before, and everything, and yeah, it was one hell of a kiss, but it doesn’t need to mean anything.”

Kame shakes his head. Jin doesn’t understand. Not yet.

It already means something.

“You need to see something.”

Then they are watching the video. The video Kame already knows by heart and he could easily tell what’s gonna happen second by second.

They watch the slow take of the dirty wall, listen to Kame’s voice talking about the horrid history of the place, and as Kame turns around with the camera, they also see Jin standing in the door. With the lack of natural light down in the basement, Jin is standing in the shadows, there’s no doubt about it. Only there’s an odd spark of light just behind his shoulder. A light that shouldn’t be there because it has no obvious source.

And then they hear it, too.

It’s a low rumble, so low Kame needs to put the volume on max for them to hear it against the background of electric buzz and cracking of Kame’s own breathing so close to the camera.

_“Ryu?”_

Jin startles, the mattress he’s sitting on bouncing under him. “What was that?”

“You’ve heard it, right?” Kame makes sure.

Jin nods. “Right now. Yes.” And then, “But I heard it before, too, I think. Down in the basement. It said ‘Ryu’, and then the other voice said ‘Hayato’. It doesn’t make sense.”

The video goes on, even though it’s shaky and the camera ends up pointed to the dirty floor as Jin snatched Kame in his arms and the two of them got lost in a kiss. There’s panting and heavy breaths, a moan neither of them remembers making, and in the middle of it all, a faint, deformed voice.

_“Hayato, you came for me.”_

By Jin’s side, Kame sits without moving, but he’s shaking all over.

“I think Ryu died down there. I think he…”

The thumping sounds people sometimes hear down in the underground. Patients whose only hope to escape that place was to bash their head against the wall and become a skull scan with a sun-shaped crack.

Kame shivers again.

Carefully, Jin puts the laptop down, scoops closer to Kame, and when his arms wrap around Kame’s shoulders and pull him in for a tight hug, Kame feels like he’s finally allowed to lose it.

The helpless feeling that has been bubbling in him for hours finally finds its way up to the surface, and he clings to Jin like it’s the only way to cling to sanity. No matter how many times he told himself Meisa’s stories were just that, stories, because ghosts aren’t real, and it’s just something to spice up the narrative about creepy abandoned places, he can’t trust his own words anymore.

There’s at least one— _two_ —right, two ghosts that are fucking real.

He hides his face into Jin’s shoulder, breathes in Jin’s scent. Jin’s drawing soothing circles all over his back. It’s weird how calm Jin is about all of this, but at the same time, Kame is grateful, because if he’s the one to fall apart, he needs someone to hold him. It’s a little selfish, sure, but he tells himself he can do the same for Jin later if Jin needs it.

“I think they are together now,” Jin says quietly. “I don’t know why it took so long or if no one else opened the damn cell door before to let them be together again, but they will be fine now.”

Jin’s hand stops moving, but stays warm against Kame’s back.

Kame slowly looks up. He hasn’t really cried, but his eyes prickle anyway. “Meisa says ghosts stay on places or with people they had the strongest emotional connection with. So if this Ryu can’t leave the basement, I don’t even want to imagine what he had to go through down there.”

Jin raises a hand and brushes a thumb over Kame’s cheek, wiping a tear that’s not there. “Then maybe imagine the connection he shared with Hayato when Hayato’s ghost found him there and stuck around.”

Yeah, that’s better. It’s still kind of insane to think about _ghosts_ like they are real people, but Kame will take it.

“Thank you,” he says.

He’s still in Jin’s arms and the closeness is overwhelming.

This time it’s Kame who closes the distance between their lips first. There are no ghosts around them and he can’t hear anything but Jin’s soft breath and a gasp when Kame’s tongue brushes over Jin’s bottom lip.

It’s slow and exploratory, they are testing each other, tasting each other. It’s all new and nice, and there’s no rush, no desperate urgency. It’s the first kiss they should’ve had. When Kame slips his hands into Jin’s hair, it’s not to pull or command, but to savor the feeling of those soft strands slipping between his fingers. Something he’s wanted to do for a while but hasn’t actually thought he’d be ever allowed to. He explores the various lengths, rubs the pads of his fingers over the short patches of hair above Jin’s ears. It tickles in the best way.

Jin moves to nip on Kame’s jaw, licks up his throat, and Kame’s pulse quickens.

“Oh shit,” he moans, tilting his head back. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

Jin chuckles against the side of Kame’s neck. “Yeah, we are. Today we’re doing this, and when you come visit me, I’m going to take your dick in my mouth.” The dirty words are such a sharp U-turn from everything that has so far happened tonight that Kame chokes on a chuckle.

“Jesus.”

Jin straightens up. “Too soon?”

Kame rubs a hand over his face. “No, I just… This is really happening, right?”

He needs to make sure, because nothing seems real anymore. It’s like the world he was so certain of knowing has fallen apart and is now being put together one small piece at time. With Jin sitting by his side, Kame is glad he won’t be left on his own to put everything back to places.

“Totally,” Jin grins.


End file.
